The Measuring Stick That Makes Every Rest Feel Like Failure
There’s a measuring stick a lot of us grew up with, and most of us never thought to question it.
It goes something like this: your value as a person is tied to what you produce. What you achieve. What you can point to and say, I did that. The degree on the wall. The promotion. The marathon medal. The impressive answer to “so what do you do?”
By that measure, a person who is striving is worth more than a person who is resting. A person climbing is worth more than a person standing still. And a person who has stopped pushing – who is content and has decided that enough is, in fact, enough – is failing at something, even if nobody can quite name what.
Most of us absorbed this so early we don’t even know we’re carrying it. We just feel the low hum of it. The sense that we should be doing more. Becoming more. Proving more.
And the exhausting part is that it never stops. There’s always another rung. Always another thing to accomplish before you can finally retire and feel like enough.
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