w…ritten by
jaron summers © 2026
We measure everything in miles.
We measure it in mortgages.
In flight loads to Singapore.
In square footage.
In whether we’re in economy or something with a bed.
We measure it in how far apart our houses are.
Six miles in Edmonton, in our case.
Which seems either practical or ridiculous, depending on the day.
And yet none of those measurements really matter.
The real unit of meaning is chair-width.
Can you lean in without raising your voice?
Can you reach the soy sauce without standing up?
Can you hear the laugh before it’s finished?
That’s civilization.
Not GDP.
Not airport lounges.
Not granite countertops or interest rates.
Just the distance between two chairs at a table where people still want to sit.
You can own houses six miles apart.
You can fly ten thousand miles across an ocean.
You can argue with a website about seat availability at three in the morning.
But in the end, what you’re really chasing is proximity.
The ability to say something softly and have someone hear it.
The ability to touch a sleeve and say,
“Remember when…”
That’s the measurement that survives.
Chair-width.
Everything else is logistics.