Something Changed

Think of someone who worked for thirty or forty years and retired. A grandparent. An older neighbour. Someone from your parents’ generation.

At the end of their working life — did they own a home? Did they take vacations? Did they have evenings free? Did they retire with something left over?

Now think of your parents at your age. Same questions.

Now look at yourself. Right now. Today.

How much do you own?

Not rent. Not make payments on. Own.

How tired are you — not from today, but from the accumulation of it? The kind of tired that doesn’t go away on weekends anymore. The kind that has a name now: burnout. A word that barely existed a generation ago, because what it describes barely existed a generation ago.

How much free time do you have — and when you have it, how much of it is actually free? Or does it belong to recovery? To catching up? To the low hum of what still needs to be done?

What does your next ten years look like?

Not the version you tell people. The version you think about at night. Does it look like progress? Like something building toward something? Or does it look like the same thing, repeated — the same amount of money going out, the same amount of ground to cover, the same distance between where you are and where you were told you’d be by now?

Three generations. The same agreement — work, and your life will be yours.

Something changed somewhere between then and now. The work didn’t get easier. The hours didn’t get shorter. The productivity went up. The technology arrived. Everything got faster.

And yet.

Your grandparent owned a house on one income. You rent on two. Your grandparent retired. You’re not sure you will. Your grandparent had Sunday. You have Sunday morning, if nothing comes up.

Nobody announced that the agreement had changed.

It just did.

The question is whether it changed by accident.