16. Who Decided This Was Normal?
Who decided that a workweek should look the way it does? That productivity matters more than being alive? That employment should require access to nearly every hour of our lives—or that love, commitment, ceremony, and a legal contract must all mean the same thing?
As I reenter the job market in pursuit of greater financial sovereignty, I’m becoming increasingly aware of how many of the rules governing modern life were inherited rather than consciously chosen. We treat them as fixed realities, but they were created by people—and what was decided by people can also be questioned, revised, and eventually replaced.
In this episode, I explore what it means to participate in systems that are clearly breaking down without abandoning ourselves to them. I talk about burnout, late-stage capitalism, the human cost of treating people like productivity machines, and the shift from a win-lose paradigm toward structures in which people can genuinely thrive together. I also bring this questioning into the personal realm, examining the assumptions we inherit about marriage, commitment, and what a meaningful partnership is supposed to look like.
We may not be able to change every circumstance immediately. But we can recognize what is false. We can stop confusing what is customary with what is inevitable. And we can give ourselves permission to imagine—and eventually build—a world that supports human life rather than consuming it. Sovereignty begins when we ask: Who decided this was normal, and what would I choose if I knew I was allowed to choose?
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