Why does society make us feel like we should always be productive to have value?

From a very young age, most of us are measured by what we produce — our grades, our output, our hustle — until resting starts to feel like something we have to earn rather than something we're simply allowed to do.

The uncomfortable truth is that a culture built on productivity needs you to believe your worth is tied to your usefulness, because the moment you stop believing that, you stop being easy to exploit.

You are not a machine with a quota — you had value the moment you existed, and no amount of doing or achieving changes that.