It became about becoming rich.

Not comfortable.

Not stable.

Rich.

Billionaire rich.

It feels like there is a clock ticking above our heads. If you are not a millionaire before thirty, you have failed. If you are not building a tech empire from your bedroom, you are behind. If your life is not aesthetic and monetized, you are wasting time.

This generation of mine was told we could be anything.

Now it feels like we can only be profitable.

What happened to passion.

What happened to curiosity.

What happened to doing something simply because it makes sense to you.

Now every hobby must scale.

Every talent must monetize.

Every friendship must network.

The only acceptable drive is cold hard cash.

And I am not innocent in this.

I am a part taker in the performance.

I once thought I needed money to control my life. To move freely. To make choices without asking permission.

Now I understand something more sobering.

I need money just to live.

To eat.

To pay rent.

To keep the lights on.

To breathe without panic.

It is a strange thing to not fully believe in capitalism, yet wake up every day governed by it.

To question the system, yet calculate your worth inside it.

To dislike the obsession with wealth, yet feel anxious when your account balance drops.

Maybe the pressure is not really about being a billionaire.

Maybe it is about survival dressed up as ambition.

And maybe the real exhaustion is pretending we are chasing luxury when we are really just trying not to drown.