Honor Your Limits-Peaceful AF

Too often women are responsible for taking on the caretaker role, whether at home with their kids or spouses or at work performing what are commonly referred to as “soft skill duties” like planning activities, mentoring etc. The reality is a lot of what women offer is overlooked and underpaid. What I have begun to appreciate nowadays are a lot of younger women in generation Z saying a very underused word, “no”. They are saying no to being overworked, they are saying no to being undervalued and are refusing to set themselves up for a life of burnout. For far too long we were taught that getting ahead meant giving every last bit of ourselves to our jobs and very little of ourselves to what we love. By the time we reach retirement–which BTW is the set up of all setups–we are granted about 10 years on average of retirement before we expire. Just so you know, the median life expectancy dropped down to 76 years old in 2021. 

So, while many media outlets have taken to referring to generation Z as spoiled and entitled, I applaud them for getting hip to the scam of capitalism and grind culture earlier than the generations that preceded them. Where our generations assimilated into our parents' grind culture, Gen Z has had a front row seat to the crisis of mental health and exhaustion their parents and grandparents took as par for the course to success. Instead this new generation has chosen their peace of mind over what’s left of the pie. They haven’t just learned their own limits, but are teaching the rest of us that just because work has existed in one way for so long doesn’t mean it needs to continue in that fashion–we can change and moreover we should want to change. 

We get but one precious life to live. This generation should know as they have lost friends to school shootings, parents to the opioid crisis and seen their world forever altered following a global health pandemic. They are the generation for the first time ever in our history to be worse off than their parents. Consequently, what they aren’t gaining in financial wealth they are gaining in life. They are designing the life that they want to live and re-imagining how we do this thing called work. They are honoring their limits and refusing to join the ranks of the ponzi scheme of capitalism and rebuffing putting off living until they hit their sunset years. They are choosing to live now because who knows what's on the horizon. Instead of belittling this younger generation I think all of us could benefit by taking a page out of their book. Life dear friends, is for the living!