… we filled the margin almost as a reflex. A free Saturday became a list of errands. A quiet evening became a backlog of half-watched television.

We confused motion with meaning, and now we are exhausted by the very cure we once prescribed for ourselves.
Lan Nguyen in A Smaller Garden, 2027

The exhaustion is not personal. It is structural, cultural, almost atmospheric. A whole generation was told that the answer to anxiety was achievement …