In this incantation, I confront how time, toil, and suffering intertwine—how I trade my hours for wages and spend them consuming what others have suffered to create. My work fuels this cycle, extracting more from time instead of freeing it. But what if success meant presence rather than productivity? I don’t have all the answers, but I know I want to reclaim time for being, not just becoming.
The Economy of My Suffering. All value comes down to time—my time, your time. It’s what holds everything together, but it’s far from neutral. Time feels heavy, full of suffering and toil. For me, it’s a reminder that I’m failing to just be. Instead of living in the present, I trade it for some imagined future. And in that gap between being and becoming, I find my suffering.
How I Measure Suffering
I measure my suffering in hours. Hours spent working, striving, and aching for more. Those hours turn into money—money I use to buy things made by others who are suffering just like me. It’s a cycle: I trade time for toil, toil for wages, and wages for things to consume.
When I stop and look around, it’s clear: this whole system is built on suffering. Every product, service, and system has a cost. That cost is someone’s labor, their pain, their time. Even in my work, I see it. The tools and systems I create are meant to make people more productive, but they’re still part of the same machine—extracting more value from time and pulling us further from just being.
Time, Toil, and Suffering
My work becomes currency. I work to earn, and I earn to feed my desires—to consume, escape, or become something else. But what am I really getting? A break from suffering? A false sense of control over my time? Or am I just making peace with the idea that suffering is normal?
The more I think about it, the more I see time as an illness. It’s the gap between where I am and the act of simply being. The more I focus on achieving, acquiring, and moving forward, the further I feel from myself. That distance feels like stress, anxiety, and a constant sense of dissatisfaction.
Where This Leaves Me
It’s not easy to face this. I have to question my role—not just as someone caught in the system but as someone contributing to it. My work is about creating tools to make people more productive, but am I just making it easier for us to trade more of our time for toil?
These questions sit at the heart of my personal and professional life. I want to create something different. What if the systems I build could reduce suffering instead of amplifying it? What if they helped us connect with the present instead of pushing us toward some future goal?
A New Perspective
I don’t have all the answers, but I believe it’s worth imagining something better. What if we didn’t measure success in hours worked or tasks completed but in moments of meaning and connection? It’s not just an ideal. It feels urgent. The alternative is staying trapped in this cycle—trading time for currency and consuming to fill a void. That’s not the future I want to help build. For me, this is where it starts: reclaiming time. Not to escape it but to use it as a space for being, not just becoming. If this resonates with you, maybe we can figure it out together.
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