People are so busy dreaming the American Dream, fantasizing about what they could be or have a right to be, that they're all asleep at the switch. Consequently we are living in the Age of Human Error.

Dreaming past the present moment

There's something genuinely unsettling about this observation because it captures something many of us feel but rarely name: we're so locked into the story of what we're supposed to become that we're not actually present for the life we're already living. The house we're buying, the promotion we're chasing, the person we're trying to impress—these future versions of ourselves are so vivid and compelling that we're operating on autopilot through the actual now. And that autopilot mode is where mistakes happen, where relationships fray, where we miss the details that actually matter.

What's striking is how this doesn't require cynicism or failure to resonate. You can be doing reasonably well by external measures and still recognize that glazed feeling—checking email while your kid talks, nodding along in meetings while planning your next thing, treating today as rehearsal for some more important tomorrow. King's "Age of Human Error" isn't just about catastrophic failures; it's about the thousand small disconnections that accumulate when we're perpetually dreaming past the present moment.

The flip side is quietly radical: what if paying attention—just noticing what's actually happening right now—could reduce the mistakes we make? Not through harder work or better planning, but through the simple act of showing up.