Shortly after 7:00 local time this morning, the internet-famous walk for peace monks began the final miles of their 2,300-mile walking journey.
They left Alexandria, Virginia, and are set to arrive in Washington, D.C., before 9:30 a.m., where theyll take part in a public event at Bender Arena.
The group plans to spend the next three days in and around the nations capital before traveling by bus to Fort Worth, Texas, where the journey began. Find out how they plan to spend the next few days.
Who are the monks and why did they walk to D.C.?
More than three months ago, a group of about 19 Buddhist monks and their rescue dog companion, Aloka, set out on a 2,300-mile walking journey to promote peace.
The movement has been well-received in the United States and globally. Throughout the journey, massive crowds of people have gathered to welcome and celebrate the monks.
They started the walk in Fort Worth, Texas, on October 26, 2025. After 108 days of walking, they arrived in Washington, D.C., this morning.
The groups Facebook page notes that theyre walking to raise awareness of inner peace and mindfulness across America and the world.
The monks have been using their Facebook page to provide updates, share photos, and announce official events. An interactive map powered by Google Maps also let people follow along with the monks in real time.
As their message of hope and peace has reached more people, their social media following has continued to grow significantly. They now have nearly 6 million combined followers across Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.
The monks’ rescue dog, Aloka, who has been part of the walking journey, has become an internet fan favorite. In January, Aloka had surgery to heal a leg injury. Hes doing well, but because hes still recovering, hes been traveling in an escort car that follows the walking route.
Aloka has his own official social media accounts. He has a combined following of over 1.5 million fans across Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.
Heres where the monks will be this week
The group has shared the following schedule for the week:
Tuesday, February 10:
7:00 a.m.: Walk from Alexandria, VA, to Washington, D.C.
9:30-10:45 a.m.: Public Event at Bender Arena
Lunch stop: Theyll attend an invite-only lunch at the National United Methodist Church
1:002:30 p.m.: Interfaith Ceremony at Washington National Cathedral
2:30 p.m.: Unity Walk on Embassy Row
In the evening, theyll attend a private event at George Washington University
Wednesday, February 11:
9:30 a.m.: Walk to Peace Monument / Capitol Hill begins
Lunch stop: Theyll attend an invite-only lunch at St. Marks Capitol Hill Church
1:30 p.m.: Begin walking to the Lincoln Memorial
2:30-4:00 p.m: Peace Gathering and Concluding Ceremony at the Lincoln Memorial
4:30-7:30 p.m.: Meditation session with Venerable Bhikkhu Pannakara at George Washington University Smith Center
Thursday, February 12:
9:00 a.m.: Begin walking from the Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium in Maryland to the Maryland State Capitol
10:00-10:45 a.m.: Peace gathering at the steps of the Maryland State Capitol
12:30 p.m.: Depart for Fort Worth, Texas, by bus
Saturday, February 14:
The group is set to arrive in Fort Worth around 8:00 a.m. They plan to walk from downtown Fort Worth to the Hng Ðo Vipassana Bhavana Center, where the 2,300-mile journey began.
The homecoming walking route is approximately six miles. To celebrate the completion of their journey, a peace gathering will be held at the Hng Ðo Vipassana Bhavana Center.
If youd like to follow along throughout the coming days, check their Facebook page for updates.
Americans’ hope for their future has fallen to a new low, according to new polling.In 2025, only about 59% of Americans gave high ratings when asked to evaluate how good their life will be in about five years, the lowest annual measure since Gallup began asking this question almost 20 years ago.It’s a warning about the depth of the gloom that has fallen over the country over the past few years. In the data, Gallup’s “current” and “future” lines have tended to move together over time when Americans are feeling good about the present, they tend to feel optimistic about the future. But the most recent measures show that while current life satisfaction has declined over the last decade, future optimism has dropped even more.The finding comes from a longstanding Gallup question that asks Americans to rate their current and future lives on a scale from 0 to 10. Those who give themselves an 8 or higher on the question about the future are categorized as optimists.“While current life is eroding, it’s that optimism for the future that has eroded almost twice as much over the course of about that last 10 years or so,” said Dan Witters, the research director of the Gallup National Health and Well-Being Index.Gallup assesses people who rate their current life at a 7 or higher and their anticipated future at an 8 or higher as “thriving.” Fewer than half of Americans, about 48%, are now in that category.Democrats and Hispanic Americans, in particular, were in a darker mood last year. But even with President Donald Trump back in the White House and his party in control of both houses of Congress, Republicans aren’t feeling nearly as good about the future as they were in the last year of Trump’s first term.
Democrats’ optimism fell significantly
Americans’ attitudes toward the future tend to shift when a new political party enters the White House generally, the party in power grows more optimistic, while the party without control is more down. For instance, Democrats became more positive about the future after Joe Biden won the presidency, while Republicans’ outlook soured.Witters notes that these changes typically happen “by roughly the same amount, same level of magnitude, so they cancel each other out.”That didn’t happen in 2025.Toward the end of Biden’s term and the start of Trump’s second term, Democrats’ optimism fell from 65% to 57%. Republicans grew more hopeful, but not enough to offset Democrats’ drop.“The regime change in the White House almost certainly was a big driving factor in what’s happened,” Witters said. “And a lot of that was just because the people who identified as Democrats really took it in the chops.”But Republicans are still quite a bit gloomier about the future than they were in the last year of Trump’s first term. A January AP-NORC poll found that while the vast majority of Republicans are still behind the president, his work on the economy hasn’t lived up to many people’s expectations.
Hispanic adults grew more pessimistic
Hispanic adults’ optimism for the near future also declined during Trump’s first year in office, dropping from 69% to 63%.That decrease was sharper than among white and Black Americans, something that Witters said could be tied to overall cost concerns, health care worries or alarm about Trump’s recent immigration policies.Last year, a survey by the American Communities Project found that people living in heavily Hispanic areas were feeling less hopeful about their future than in 2024. Trump’s favorability fell among Hispanics over the course of 2025, according to AP-NORC polling, which also found that Hispanic adults reported higher levels of economic stress than other groups.A Pew Research Center poll conducted in October found that the administration’s tough immigration enforcement is highly visible in Hispanic communities. About 6 in 10 Latinos said they had seen or heard of Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids or arrests in their community in the past six months.“(Deportations are) something that everybody can see and look at with their own eyes,” Witters added. “But if you’re Hispanic, I think it’s fair to think that that might hit a little closer to home.”
This data is a part of the Gallup National Health and Well-Being Index. The 2025 results are based on data collected over four quarterly measurement periods, totaling 22,125 interviews with U.S. adults who are part of the probability-based Gallup Panel.
Linley Sanders, Associated Press
Target Corporation has reportedly announced that it will cut about 500 roles at the company, partially in an effort to reallocate financial resources to boost the in-store customer experience.
The job cuts would be the second major wave of cuts that Target has made in the last five months, and come less than two weeks after the companys new CEO stepped into the role. Heres what you need to know.
Whats happened?
On Monday, media outlets including CNBC and MarketWatch reported on a memo sent to Target employees by the companys chief stores officer, Adrienne Costanzo, and its chief supply chain and logistics officer, Gretchen McCarthy.
In the memo, the executives announced that the chain would be initiating more layoffsthis time cutting around 500 positions.
However, the majority of the job cuts will not impact store-level retail workers. Instead, the memo says that about 400 jobs will be lost across its distribution and another 100 jobs will go across its store district level.
Fast Company has reached out to Target for comment. We’ll update this story if we hear back.
Targets roughly 2,000 stores are divided into geographic districts staffed by corporate regional office workers. The memo stated that the number of these districts will be reduced, and thus some corporate workers overseeing these districts will be let go.
Target has around 440,000 employees, most of whom work in its retail division. Job cuts of around 500 mean Target is laying off about 1/10 of 1% of its workforce.
Why is Target cutting jobs?
Besides a reorganization of its geographic districts, the financial savings from job cuts will allow Target to reinvest more money into front-line in-store staffing. This change also fuels our ability to put significantly more payroll in our storesprimarily in additional labor and hours where needed most, but also in new guest experience training for every team member at every store, the memo stated.
In recent years, Target has faced customer criticism that checkout lines have gotten longer and stores have become messier. This has been attributed to lower staffing levels in stores and to store employees being taken off the floor to help fulfill online curbside orders.
But the job cuts also come less than two weeks after Targets new CEO, Michael Fiddelke, stepped into the role at the beginning of this month. Fiddelke was named incoming CEO last year and had previously served as the companys operating officer.
Fiddelke himself is the one who notified Target employees via memo in October that the company was laying off 1,800 workers. At the time, Fiddelke said those layoffs were a necessary step in building the future of Target and enabling the progress and growth we all want to see.
Target hit by external and self-made problems
In recent years, Target has had essentially flat year-over-year sales, not helped by the fact that many of its cost-conscious consumers are cutting back on their discretionary spending and inflation surges. A majority of the goods Target sells are discretionary items.
Additionally, many of Targets products come from China and other countries in Asia that have been hit hard by President Trumps tariffs, thus raising Targets costs when it imports those goods to the United States.
The company also shot itself in the foot last year when it reversed course on its celebrated diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in the wake of Trump entering the White House for a second term.
The reversal of its DEI policies led to fierce consumer backlash and boycotts, resulting in foot traffic falling by almost 8% in many of its stores.
How has Targets stock price reacted to the layoff news?
Investors in Target Corporation (NYSE: TGT) seem unfazed by the news of more job cuts. Yesterday, TGT shares closed roughly flat to $115.52 per share. And in premarket trading this morning, TGT shares are up only about 0.4%.
Given this, investors seem to think the layoffs and district changes will have little meaningful impact on Targets financesat least in the immediate term.
The good news for Target is that, as of yesterdays close, the companys shares are up over 18% year to date. While the companys stock price is still down about 12% over the past year, TGT shares have now recovered significantly since their November low of around $83.
To Dr. Richard Pan, a California-based pediatrician, the idea of living a long, healthy life should not be a partisan issue.
Unfortunately, it’s become one: He knows that topics like vaccines, healthcare, and science at large are now extremely politicized, and that whoever has the power to shape our policies can have a big impact on the health of Americans.
Pan has seen that firsthand in his time serving in California’s state assembly and then senate, where he authored landmark legislation around vaccines, health insurance, and even a law that led California to produce its own insulinwhich paved the way for the state to offer the medicine for as low as $11.
Now, Pan is running for Congress, motivated by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.s anti-vaccine agenda and broad issues around healthcare affordability.
I swore in medical school as part of my oath to help people and improve health, he says. Part of my career commitment would be to say, Okay, well, I tried doing that at the state [level] and succeeded. Now I need to go to the federal government.’
Pan is part of a wave of experts in STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) who are running for Congressional seats in response to the Trump administrations attacks on science, facts, and also affordability.
From doctors to scientists to math teachers, Democratic candidates, frustrated with the federal governments actions, see an opportunity to use their STEM skills to win seats in Congress, and eventually shape policies that help the public.
While some of these candidates have prior political experience, others are completely new to politics.
Dr. Richard Pan listens as senate bill 277 is passed at the California state capitol building in Sacramento, Calif., on Thursday, June 25, 2015. [Photo: Liz Hafalia/The San Francisco Chronicle/Getty Images]
RFK Jr. as a tipping point
Pan first ran for Californias state assembly in 2010 after witnessing the effects of the Great Recession. The state struggled to pass a new budget, and funding shortfalls led to cuts to various health services.
I decided things were so bad that I would throw my hat in the ring and run, he says. He flipped the Republican seat.
Pan served in the State Assembly until 2014, and the state Senate from 2014 to 2022, before returning to medicine full-time.
When RFK Jr. was announced as the Health and Human Services secretary, though, Pan saw it as a tipping point. He had already confronted RFK’s vaccine skepticism as a state lawmaker, and he saw RFK’s role in Trump’s administration as something that could upend everything he worked on to help Californians.
At the state level, Pan authored legislation that restricted vaccine exceptions; that law went into effect the same year California saw a massive measles outbreak.
California hasn’t had such a large outbreak since. But measles cases are surging across the country, and RFK Jr. has been behind much measles vaccine misinformation. That risks everyone, Pan says. As cases increase, risks rise even for vaccinated individuals.
When RFK Jr. spread false claims about vaccines during his Senate testimony, people started calling Panreporters, community membersasking what he was going to do about all the health protections being undone by the federal government.
I said OK, then Im going to Congress, because thats where the problem is now, he says. Pan is running for the House in Californias 6th District. That seat is currently held by Democrat Ami Bera, who is challenging a Republican in the redrawn 3rd District.
“Evidence and reason and the facts”
Pan isnt the only STEM expert who was asked to take action in response to the Trump administration.
Manny Rutinel, a microbiologist, first responder, and environmental lawyer, says community members asked him to step into the political ring for both his position in the Colorado legislature and his run for Congress.
Rutinel is now running to represent Colorados 8th districta seat Democrats lost by less than 1 point in 2024. The incumbent, Republican Gabe Evans, is running again, and multiple race ratings have called a toss up for 2026.
To Rutinel, the stakes of both his campaign, and similar campaigns across the country, are clear.
To be able to put a stop to the horrors of what the Trump administration and RFK Jr. are doing to our government, our institutions, our services, we need to take back Congress, he says.
He already sees his science background, along with his working-class background, reaching potential voters. In the first quarter of 2025 fundraising, his campaign raised more than $1.1 million, with an average donation of $32.
The message is resonating, he says. We want folks who are standing up for what’s right, who are using evidence and reason and the facts to be able to put forth legislation that actually helps people instead of hurting them.
Problem-solving mentalities
Jake Johnson has taught high school math for the past 20 years. Hes never been involved in politics, but now hes running to represent Minnesotas 1st Congressional Districta seat currently held by Republican Brad Finstad.
He knows his reasoning could sound like a cliche, but he stands by it.
I genuinely have enjoyed solving problems for two decades, he says, and I think that sort of spirit and mindset is something that is maybe missing a little bit in Washington these days.
The neighbors in his district seem to like that problem-solving mentality, too. Johnsons campaign raised $100,000 the first day it launched. In both Q2 and Q3 of 2025, he outraised Finsad; Johnsons average donation is under $50.
Though hes completely new to politics, Johnson is hopeful about his campaign; he describes himself as a crazy optimist.
Hes also buoyed by the other STEM candidates he sees running across the country, many who arelike him, Pan, and Rutinelbacked by 314 Action, a PAC that is specifically working with STEM candidates in response to the Trump administration.
We live in such a time of polarization where people get their facts from different sources [and] when we can’t agree on basic fundamentals, we cant have powerful, thoughtful conversations as a community, he says. Weve got to get back to establishing some truths as much as we possibly can.
Public confidence in scientists
Already in 2026, 314 Action is working with more than 150 STEM candidates nationwide.
Many of those races are for Congress: beyond Pan, Rutinel, and Johnson, the PAC is backing Bale Dalton, former chief of staff at NASA and first-time political candidate running for Floridas 7th District; and Audrey Denney, an agricultural scientist and educator running in Californias 1st District, among others.
There are also STEM candidates running at more local levels, like Nirav Shah, who was director of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention during the COVID-19 pandemic, and who is now running for Maine’s governorship.
Americans public trust in government has been eroding. Only 17% of Americans say they trust the government in Washington to do what is right just about always or even most of the time, according to Pew Research.
But they still largely trust scientists. A January 2025 Pew Research study found that 77% of U.S. adults say they have a great deal or fair amount of coincidence in scientists acting in the publics best interest.
Public confidence in scientists has dropped slightly since the start of the pandemic, but scientists continue to rank higher in confidence than elected officials or business leaders.
To 314 Action, the current debates in Congress over vaccines, healthcare, and more point to a need for more STEM candidates. The PAC both recruits candidates and reaches out to candidates already running; recently, it said that all of its 150-plus STEM candidates outraised their opponents in the last quarter of 2025.
The PAC has faced criticism for taking and concealing donations from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, in a 2024 Oregon Congressional race; 314 Action pushed back against the reporting at the time before campaign documents became public.
“As Trump and RFK Jr. ramp up their attacks on science and health care, 314 Action’s mission to recruit and elect more Democrats with science backgrounds has never been more urgent,” Erik Polyak, 314 Action’s executive director, said in a statement. “We work with a broad political coalition of individuals and organizations laser-focused on advancing winning campaigns.”
To some, it might not be obvious that STEM experts would enter politics. Members of Congress tend to come from fields like law or business primarily (though education and public service are also dominant backgrounds).
But to Dr. Pan, and others in STEM currently running for office, the idea makes clear sense. Pan cites Rudolf Virchow, the father of modern pathology, who said that “politics is nothing but medicine at a larger scale.”
“The nature of politics right now demands that we actually enter the political field and practice medicine on a larger scale, as Virchow said, because it’s under attack,” Pan says. “One of the major sources of the problem right now is the current administration and the current people in Congress.”
When Zillow launched 20 years ago, the home-buying process happened almost entirely offline. The companys digital listings, combined with its innovative Zestimatean estimate of a homes value, based on the kind of data typically only available to real estate professionalsmarked a turning point for the housing market. Zestimates werent exact representations of value, but they put power back in the hands of prospective buyers (to sellers and agents chagrin). Their near-instant popularity was an early do your research internet moment.
Fast-forward to the present day, and Zillow, which has a $13 billion market cap and reports earnings after the market close on February 10, is once again under pressure. In partnership with First Street, a provider of climate risk data, Zillow had been publishing climate risk scores for the homes on its platform. But some homeowners have balked at their scores, and some have even sued. A home that First Street labels as high-risk for flooding, for example, can quickly drop in value.
Zillow CEO Jeremy Wacksman, who joined the company in 2009 and became CEO in 2024, is walking a careful line. Zillows brand is associated with data transparency and consumer empowerment, but an increasing share of its revenue is tied to real estate agents who pay for software tools that help them virtually stage homes and message with open house leads.
On the eve of the companys Q4 2025 earnings, which analysts estimate will be $650 million in revenue for the quarter, 17.4% growth, Wacksman sat down with Fast Company to talk about how Zillow is navigating the competing demands of its two-sided marketplace, the affordability crisis, and more.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Zestimates werent perfect in Zillows early days, but even so, they were never taken down. Yet in the case of First Streets climate risk scores, youve moved them to a separate place; people have to click through and leave the site. Walk me through the thinking there.
Jeremy Wacksman [Photo: Zillow]
When you are focused on helping the consumer, the buyer, and seller, you want to try and provide as much information as you can with the right context. That’s what the Zestimate always has been. And we show our work, right? We show what our accuracy is. It’s not an appraisal, it’s not a professional opinion, but its a great starting point. Our philosophy is: Information needs context. And its hard for it to be perfect, but more information generally, when given the right context, is better than less.
Climate is the same way. We still have climate data on our site. We’ve tweaked what we show on Zillow versus what we link out to third parties, just given some of the accuracy data on some of the [climate] data sets. Get an official appraisal and figure out what you want to do, but almost every buyer and seller appreciates that data to start that conversation.
It feels like part of the reason people are so sensitive to potentially a bad climate score or a bad Zestimate is just because of the state of the housing market. Inventory is tight, sales are sluggish, prices are high. There is this growing consensus that we need to make owning a home more affordable. Where do you see that tension over affordability show up on Zillow?
The most stark change over the last decade has been the percentage of buyers who start with an affordability question versus start by window shopping. When I first joined, everyone just wanted to window shop. Thats how you got started. You fell in love with a home, then you hired an agent, then you figured out your financing. Now thats flipped. About half as many buyers will say, I dont even want to go get excited. I want to understand, can I do this? That massive shift, I think, is the best representation of the affordability crisis.
Youre right: We are in a period where homes are incredibly unaffordable. Home prices have run up nearly 100% in some markets from pre-pandemic levels. Average rates obviously ran up, too, so your mortgage per home gets even less affordable. That’s why you’re seeing transaction volumes at 30-year lows. In a normal housing market, 5.5 million to 6 million homes will trade every year. We’re at 4 million. Relative to the last couple of years, it’s getting a little better, but if you zoom out, it is still dramatically unaffordable.
What are the leading indicators you’re watching to see if the market is on the cusp of change?
One way to track the overall picture is [to look at] what you consider an affordable home for a median-income household. With a 20% down payment, 30% of your income [going toward] a mortgage payment is affordable. At the markets worst, we were close to 40% on average, so almost nothing was affordable. Now its drifting back down. I think that’s what you watch for.
Zillow has been investing a lot in AI. One of the features that probably a lot of people have seen is virtual staging, or the use of software to add furniture and design elements to a listing. How do you go from conception to execution on something like that?
Virtual staging as a concept is not something we invented. What we invented was the ability to do it with really modest tools. We saw this technology coming; we saw 3D tours and interactive floor plans, all these things. But they were done with very high-end, very expensive cameras and media capture.
How do you get that to an average real estate agent? Thats the problem. The average real estate agent has maybe a $100 360-camera or an iPhone. So we built the technology ourselves. Thats why you now see virtual staging on 5% or 10% of listings in some markets. The agents can easily capture some media; we can generate an interactive walk-through.
Zillow is trying to go from being an ad-based business to supporting transactions directly. Do those tools generate the kind of leads that you’re interested in?
We are fortunate to have hundreds of millions of people on Zillow every month, shopping, dreaming, starting their transaction, using us as a companion. But we only help a very small share of those people actually buy, sell, or rent a home.
Virtual staging and interactive floor plans and 3D tours: Those are tools for a listing agent to go win more business. But we spend as much time on software for agents to run their business, whether that’s book their appointments, schedule showings, run their offer processes.
Sometimes, the best use cases of AI are just making that more efficient. I’ll give you an example. Agents are sending hundres of messages a day to all their clients. Well, that’s something that generative AI can help with. We’re now sending millions of what we call smart messages. That’s something that sounds very simple, but think about the productivity gain. It helps them be a better guide, which helps them convert more business, which helps Zillow convert more business.
Zillow is a partner to ChatGPT, which has been starting to encourage e-commerce through its interface. Some shopping categories are pretty simple. Its easy to imagine, for example, that someone is going to go to ChatGPT and say, What are the best pliers? But a home is a little bit different, right?
Buying a home and selling home, for sure, it’s a very different category than most verticals. The most interesting stat to me is that as technology gets more pervasive, and as data gets bigger, buyers and sellers feel even more paralyzed, and they want even more help. The percentage of people who say, I want a full-service professional to help me is higher now than it was before the internet, before the smartphone.
You could think about ChatGPT and Gemini as a source of traffic for a vertical like ours, or as a technology we can build into our experience. We think the latter is really where its going to go. The average buyer spends six to nine months shopping, sometimes longer, sometimes years on and off. In this category, you are ultimately making a set of trade-offs between what you can afford, whats available at the time, and all of your lifestyle situationsthe commute, the school, the neighborhood. You dont get to just pick from a shelf of endless supply.
Thats why you end up hiring really good people to help you figure out how to make those trade-offs and figure out how to make sure you don’t make a financial decision that will cost you, because its the biggest financial decision youll ever make in your life. When it comes to figuring out the mortgage, figuring out which house to buy, figuring out how to sell your house, we think it will be this interweaving of professionals, professional software, buyers and sellers. And now you’re going to see LLMs [large language models] weave into all that.
Twenty years in the future, what’s the one thing that will be really different about the search and the one thing that will be really different about the actual transaction?
This category doesnt work like any other category on your phone. You open your phone and you look at shopping and ride-hailing and travel and even wealth managementso much is digital. Real estate doesnt work that way yet. Weve made a bunch of progress, but it doesnt. Its very analog. Its very paper based. Its very asynchronous. We survey consumers every year, and the stat that always sticks out to me is that more than half of homebuyers cry during the process. I’m hopeful that in 20 years, hopefully in less than 20 years, we [can make Zillow into] more of a one-stop shop. Its smart. It’s personal. It’s just all there for you.
The boomers are all about money. Gen X is like, is it all about money? Millennials are like, where is the money? And Gen Z is like, what is money?
Thats the conclusion Parks and Recreation star Amy Poehler came to on an episode of her podcast Good Hang with Amy Poehler. Since the episode aired last year, a clip has since been shared widely of her breaking down how each generation relates to money. She adds, “That’s my bad stand-up about it.”
As the clip has gained traction online, on TikTok, actor Freddie Smith said that Poehler “totally nails it.” He then took it one step further and broke it down in terms of how each generation’s economy helped shape their attitude toward money.
He says that for boomers, who lived through an economic boom, accumulating wealth was easyor at least easier than it has ever been since. Baby boomers currently hold more than $85 trillion in assets, making them the richest generation by far. Therefore, they earn the title all about the money.
Millennials, meanwhile, were handed a map and told the exact steps to follow to find the financial success their parents enjoyed. Only when they got there we open up the treasure chest and there’s two f-ing coins in it, explains Smith. Now, theyre all struggling through their millennial midlife crisis trying to come to terms with all the ways theyve been sold a dream.
Then theres Gen Z. They’re going to work and they’re getting paid direct deposit on Fridays and as soon as that money hits the account, it just goes automatically to their bills. They don’t actually ‘touch’ money,” says Smith. Disillusionomics has come to define a generation thats lost faith in the traditional markers of stability. What once defined financial successa house, a family, retirementfeels increasingly out of reach for the youngest working generation.
“This is such a true representation of what we’re all screaming about right now, Smith concluded. What is going ON?”
(An explanation for Gen X doesnt appear in the video, which doesnt do much to beat the forgotten generation allegations.)
Poehlers soundbite emerged from a discussion with Parks and Recreation creator Mike Schur about shifting workplace environments, particularly in Hollywoodbut also beyond.
Schur suggests theres a historical belief in Hollywood that if something good comes out of a chaotic environment, then its taken as validation: this must be the best way to produce great work. Its similar to how the eat-sleep-work lifestyleakin to the infamous 996 schedulehas recently gained momentum among certain tech companies. So we better not try to fix the chaos, he says. When a rational person would think, let’s fix the chaos.
If the chaos is fixed, he suggests, people will still be able to produce just as good workbut without putting up with a toxic work environment as part of the deal. Schur says this attitude has improved in Hollywood in recent years. Poehler agrees, putting this down to a push from younger generations, who have just reminded us that we don’t need to put up with behavior that we were used to putting up with.
Thanks to Gen Zs penchant for work-life balance, people are just a little bit less okay with having their lives ruined at work, she says.
When Schur, 50, and Poelher, 54, were coming up in Hollywood, you put your head down and you try to survive, Schur recalls.
The generation behind us, and especially the one behind that generation, looks at chaos and goes likeoh, then no, thank you.
Its time we recognize the compelling case for “wellness governance.”
Being a leader today requires a new level of performance. One that overrides fatigue, can suppress internal signals, and absorbs constant urgency, all while rapidly context-switching. Simply said, modern leadership demands have increased, and not everyone isor wants to stayon board.
Today’s leaders face growing expectations, dynamic responsibilities, and constant pressure to perform amid deep uncertainty and an ever-accelerating business ecosystem. This is reshaping the role of leadership into something increasingly challenging to sustain, and driving CEOs like HSBCs Noel Quinn to step back and refocus on better balance between their personal and business lives.
But performance and well-being arent oppositesthey enable each other. Wellness is a fundamental pillar of sustainable business practice. It provides the foundation of our clarity, stamina, and presence, and notably cant be achieved through the avoidance of burnout alone.
So its not surprising that with new leadership demands seen to be untenable, CEO turnover is at record levels and continues to climb. Around 52% of C-suite executives feel overworked and burned out. Median tenure among the S&P 500 companies has decreased 20% from 6 years in 2013 to 4.8 years in 2022all at a time when HR heads are warning their boards of drying pipelines for high-potential future leaders. This pipeline crisis is magnified by Gen Z and millennial workers who are progressively rejecting traditional high-demand career pathways marked by high burnout rates.
The result? Loss of key existing talent, associated productivity decline and risk during key leadership transitions, and significant erosion of internal readiness around succession planning. The data supports this: By early 2025, 44% of new S&P 500 CEOs and 52% of FTSE 100 CEOs were external hires, largely cited as due to internal benches being too thin.
Easily overlooked
While conversations on wellness in the workplace are advancingand for good reasonto support everyday workers, leaders are often left out of the conversation. Executives have become an easily overlooked segment in employer wellness discussions at a time when they are the ones tasked with driving them. Said differently, and ironically, companies investing in corporate wellness initiatives elevate leaders championing workforce health but can inadvertently ignore the well-being of the champions themselves. So, where does that leave top leaders of companies? And who should be safeguarding and governing their wellness?
Leaders are not immune to the same physical, mental, social, and cognitive health stressors that impact any person. But they are highly skilled at maintaining external composure in muting or even ignoring the impact of such strain. Executive-level competence has a unique ability to mask the cost of declining leadership healthbut only until that cost mounts toward becoming unavoidable, and with potential to ripple far beyond the individual leaders.
Market response
When Apple announced that Steve Jobs was taking indefinite medical leave related to a physical health concern, its shares dopped 6%. United Airlines CEO Oscar Munoz suffered a heart attack 37 days into the job, and uncertainty around his health condition contributed to short-term stock volatility and further share price drop for an already-declining stock. And when Bed Bath & Beyonds CFO died by suicide, the companys stock lost 15%.
Markets are becoming more sensitive to executive illness and death. In fact, research shows that a CEOs medical leave can have a particularly negative impact on shareholder value, especially when the leave is extended or the CEO is older. A 2016 paper analyzing CEO deaths at U.S. public companies found that between 1950 and 2009 markets seemed to react more and more strongly to such deaths, even after accounting for other factors.
Its clear that investor confidence is closely linked with key leader health and wellnessand it should be. Companies ranking higher in well-being yield significantly higher returns and outperform the S&P, and leadership is a key driver of this. So its no surprise that WTWs 2025 global directors and officers survey found, for the second year running, that health and safety is the No. 1 risk for directors and officers globally. Top priorities include physical health and safety in the workplace and workplace impact on mental health and well-being. Yet there is no specific mention of leadership health as a stand-alone topic of distinct risk and interest.
Leadership takes a toll on health
Interestingly, recent research out of Sweden found that not only is poor health associated with greater CEO turnover, but health itself predicts appointment to a CEO position. Which implies that not only should boards be governing wellness and health for C-suite leaders to increase overall effectiveness and lengthen executive tenure, but boards should also oversee health and wellness of high-potential, next-generation leaders as part of critical succession planning.
The leadership track is an increasingly hard sell for next-generation leaders given the latest research on CEO aging. Using a database of CEO facial images and applied machine learning to estimate CEO age, new research shows industry distress causes faster visible agingadding an average of 1.2 years to their visual appearance for a given crisis or single period of distress. And with senior leaders today navigating an era of permacrisis, stacking and simultaneous crises could amplify this effect. Further, CEs who experience periods of industry-wide distress during their tenure are found to die significantly earlier.
This research quantifies a previously little documented yet important cost associated with serving as a leaderpersonal health cost. Leadership bears very real and material health consequences, especially when exposed to increased job demands and high-stress work environments of high-profile positions. The health effect is sizable. While many are quick to criticize the perks of CEO life, research has found that reduction in longevity of CEOs is consistent even with big pay packages. This signals an important trade-off for companies and individuals alike when there is a substantial personal cost to health and life expectancy. Its no wonder newer generations may be gun-shy to take a similar path.
There is an evolving fragility to traditional social contracts that key executives have with their companies. There are real yet often unspoken limits to the complexity, demands, uncertainty, and overload that individual leaders can sustain. And there is a necessary acknowledgment of the impact on individual leaders health and wellness, as well as broader amplified effects for companies.
A lack of governance
Leaders have a tendency to select for short-term productivity and hard-charge without needed recovery in order to remain responsive under escalating pressure “in the moment.” Take Elon Musk touting the benefits of sleep deprivation to achieve 120-hour workweeks and making a Tesla factory his primary residence for nearly three years. Most leaders focus their energy on being effective, not necessarily being well. And we havent developed sufficient governance to regulate this beyond the individuals themselves, both in the best interest of the leaders and the companies they helm.
It is said to be a sign of intelligence to hold two opposing ideas at once while retaining the ability to function. This “doublethink” is equally true for balancing the health of a company (including financial health and workforce well-being) with the health of individual executives. Leaders are trained to regulate their corporate environments long before they regulate themselves, if ever at all. They often live in a state of chronic activation that is easily normalized but effectively overrides their physiology in an unsustainable way. Eventually, our bodies respond accurately to stressors and strain even if our intellect initially seeks to normalize them. And that is problematic for everyone involved.
Well-being governance isnt just about the concept of self-care for leaders. Its about ensuring sustainable capacity and leadership to tap into the right level of decision-making, creative thinking, and steady engagement needed. This is what allows leaders to use both a microscope and a telescope, in parallel, to solve discrete near-term problems while driving long-term strategic efforts.
Leaders are not without their own level of governance and oversight, which is typically provided by a companys board of directors and executive team. And while wellness initiatives for populations of employees are most effective when championed by senior management, wellness initiatives for leaders are arguably most effective where championed by the board and C-suite.
Good stewardship
Effective boards and executive teams create and preserve long-term value by acting as well-being stewards of their enterprises. This includes providing appropriate levels of well-being governance and oversight, underpinned by the fact that healthy employees make better decisions and drive superior results. Effective leaders and boards understand the connection between corporate performance and well-being, including the materiality of well-being for executive-level human capital. And corporate governance of executive wellness has evolved from an HR-led perk into a strategic board-level priority, essential for both risk management and long-term value creation.
Getting this right involves formal safeguarding of the physical and mental health of senior leaders to ensure stable decision-making and organizational resilience. Ultimately, executive wellness is a “human capital” governance issue requiring top-level oversight and strategic integration. And in a way that recognizes that leadership burnout and health crises directly impact share price and operational stability.
This necessitates having accountability via standing committees, such as governance or compensation committees, charged with reviewing wellness assessments and setting baseline health targets for leaders. It also means elevating succession planning to include proactive health governance so that leadership pipelines remain healthy and key person risks for executives health are mitigated. And given that effective governance requires leaders not only to oversee wellness but also to model it, boards can mandate resilience training and structured stress management for executives in ways that support upskilling and also help nurture a health-forward culture that filters down to the entire workforce.
Other initiatives may include:
Visible participation of executives in wellness initiatives to legitimize and destigmatize such initiatives
Use of KPIs to track effectiveness at the workforce population level and for key executives and high-potential succession talent
Review of data on absenteeism, retention, and healthcare offerings engagement as well as use of frameworks for auditing workplace health and safety at the executive level
Tying executive compensation to health and wellness goals to emphasize the importance of prioritizing health
Setting clear standards on using existing wellness initiatives and perks, as simple as ensuring leaders use a minimum proportion of their vacation days each year
A fiduciary duty
Forward-thinking organizations must now treat leadership health with the same rigor as financial reporting, ultimately recognizing wellness as a fiduciary duty. What began as private health concerns behind closed doors have transformed into a material business factor that now influences investor decisions, market valuations, and regulatory frameworks. At a time when nearly 70% of the C-suite are seriously considering quitting for a job that better supports their well-being, and 81% prioritize their health over advancing their career, we need to overcome old disconnects around performance and health. A strong focus on well-being is critical to both employee and executive retention.
Now is the time to legitimize executive well-being and make it part of the regular corporate dialogue. It should be explored with authentic curiosity and deep urgency around how top leaders are doing as a way for companies and investors to develop new antennae. This is especially important given that recent research from Spencer Stuart shows only 22% of global CEOs feel their board provides opportunities to discuss sensitive topics such as pesonal well-being.
And given CEOs shortening tenures, it is critical that boards and not just C-suite executives ensure well-being governance endures and is perpetuated. If best practice is oversight for areas most material to a business, whether to reduce risk or capture competitive advantage, it only makes sense that we ensure special wellness focus for top leaders as part of that oversight.
The financial and nonfinancial impacts are impossible to ignore. And as we move from looking at executive wellness as a personal matter to recognizing it as a fundamental pillar of sustainable business practice, its time we recognize a novel truth: Executive wellness governance really is the new corporate imperative.
At the new ad agency Ability Machine in Nashville, creatives have access to a full suite of tools ranging from podcasting and photography studios to lighting equipment and design software. They also have quiet sensory rooms, dimmable lights, and a flexible seating system. Every part of the agency, from the way it tackles projects to the physical space it works from, is designed with its staff in mind, who are all adults with intellectual disabilities.
The Ability Machine describes itself as a studio powered by neurodiverse minds that turns creativity into both purpose and a paycheck for adults with varying abilities. So far, Ability Machine has already worked with multiple local brands, as well as national names like Mercedes-Benz and Kind, on a range of creative assets from slogans to artwork for retail spaces and ad campaigns.
[Photo: courtesy the Ability Machine]
The agency is a newly formalized offshoot of the autism-focused nonprofit On the Avenue, which provides a studio space for adults with intellectual disabilities to pursue creative passions and, in some cases, find employment on a range of projects.
On the Avenue founder Tom Woodard has run the nonprofit for the past 10 years. Before that, he had a long career in advertising and brand building, primarily helping brands create signature jingles (you might remember him as the voice of the iconic Budweiser Super Bowl frogs). He says the idea for Ability Machine grew slowly over time, as he began bringing some of his creative projects to the community members at On the Avenue and asking for their input.
While there are other programs out there for adults with intellectual disabilities, Woodard says he doesnt know of any other spaces that encourage their members to pursue their own creative workand ultimately leverage those passions into paid opportunities in the ad industry.
A space to build professional skills
Ability Machine is located inside On the Avenues 6,000-square-foot warehouse space, which is already equipped with a podcast room, sound studio, multitrack recording software, and more. Its also a work environment thats been designed with accessibility as a key priority, meaning members have access to different types of seating depending on their needs, sensory rooms to mitigate overstimulation, and customizable light and sound settings.
It’s really cool because if you’ve got somebody that says, Oh, quick, we need a storyboard written, we can turn to a citizen and employ them immediately, Woodard says. There’s a familiarity of the building, of the staff, of their surroundings that someone with an intellectual disability really needs and flourishes in.
[Photo: courtesy the Ability Machine]
Days at On the Avenue are organized like a typical work day. Members arrive at 8 a.m., open the day with a group conversation, take a walk around the neighborhood, and then engage in something called assignment-based learning, which Woodard says is comparable to an individualized education program (IEP). The goal is to offer members a structured, productive environment that, for many adults with intellectual disabilities, can be difficult to find after high school ends at the age of 18.
Eighty-five percent of all folks with intellectual disabilities are underemployed or unemployed, Woodard says. That was just a bad number. It needed somebody to step up and do something.
Assignment-based learning at On the Avenue consists of projects guided by the interests of members. For example, Woodard says, one member named Riley has turned his love of college sports into a podcast called Rowdy Rileys Sports Review, where hes interviewed more than 15 NFL players and coaches. The team at On the Avenue is now looking for partners to help monetize the podcast.
[Photo: courtesy the Ability Machine]
People always ask me, ‘What’s the outcome that you’re looking for?’ Woodard says. And I go, I don’t know. It’s like when you go to collegenobody says, Hey, this is where you’re going to go work afterwards. We simply try to build those job skills, those life skills, those roommate skills for these individuals through creativity, which makes it fun.
Its through projects like Rileys podcast that the idea for Ability Machine slowly germinated. The concept took real shape, though, when Woodard brought a project he was working on through his own creative agency for a Nashville candy shop called Goo Goo to members at On the Avenue.
I remember we were doing the remodel of the Goo Goos 3rd Avenue store, Woodard says. [The Goo Goo team] came in and we were sitting around our table, and I brought a bunch of folks that were at On the Avenue to sit at the table. One guy started drawing purple goo goos, and doing different things, and it brought something out in them.
[Image: courtesy the Ability Machine]
After that meeting, members at On the Avenue helped complete the physical design of the 3rd Avenue location, as well as developing the slogan, Never Chocolate Alone, as a reference to Goo Goos bars with multiple mix-ins.
[Image: courtesy the Ability Machine]
From there, Woodard began pitching the budding creative agency to other companies, leading to more projects like a collaboration with Kind (maker of breakfast and snack bars) to create art in its New York City offices; a series of custom thank you cards and coloring books for a local Mercedes dealership; and an ad campaign for the brewery Music City Beer Co. Within the last few months, Woodard formalized this work into the official Ability Machine brand, with help from the creative and strategic partner Lewis and web development partner Ally.
[Image: courtesy the Ability Machine]
A new kind of ad agency
The Ability Machines work model is flexiblesome of its employees are full-time staffers, while others are community members at On the Avenue who can opt to contribute part-time for a project and receive an hourly wage. The system is built to ensure that members can work on schedules that make sense for them, while gaining hands-on professional experience.
Currently, the Ability Machine has several new projects in the works, but Woodard is hoping to spread the word about the agencys model to a broader base. Until established ad agencies are able to adjust their own office spaces to accommodate workers with intellectual disabilities, Woodard says, hiring the Ability Machine on smaller projects is a great way to support the community.
I didn’t want to build an agency just to build another agency, Woodard says. I wanted to build something with purpose.
The legend of Sisyphus goes like this: As punishment for cheating death and embarrassing the gods, he is banished to the underworld and sentenced to push a boulder up a hill. As Sisyphus nears the peak, the boulder rolls back down, and he must start over. And the episode repeats for eternity.
I risk sounding melodramatic by comparing this story to the plight of the employed in 2026. Fair enough. But consider, if you will, the cycles in which a modern worker finds herself.
She masters a new skill, and its deemed outdated. She learns a new software, and is told to use a different one. She gets a new boss, and the company is reorganized. She applies for a job, and gets no response. She lands a new job, and the job is dissolved.
The dark core of the story of Sisyphus is not that his toil is repetitive or even that its eternal. Its that the work is erased as soon as its done. The punishmentapparently the worst that the Greek gods could think ofis to accomplish nothing.
If our skills and our jobs and the fruits of our labor are simply meaningless, are we not also climbing that hill with our own boulders?
The problem of change fatigue
Change fatigue is just that: fatigue. This has been studied, quite extensively, by psychologists.
A 2024 long-term study of more than 50,000 workers in Germany found that organizational changeslike reorgs, layoffs, outsourcing, and mergersare linked to things like sleep disturbance, nervousness, tiredness, and depression, and that the more changes an individual undergoes, the more likely they are to have these symptoms. Organizational change is often implemented at the cost of employees working conditions and health, the researchers conclude.
Dutch academics studied the effects of repeated changes in a big European bank (they wouldnt say which one) and found that the more change that workers experienced, the more likely they were to feel change fatigue. And the more fatigued they felt, the more likely they were to resist the next change. The more resistant employees became, the less likely it was that the companys changes would succeed.
But even those who supported the goals of the change were just as resistant as their unsupportive coworkers. The problem wasnt the change itself; it was the knowledge that another change would come along right after it, wiping out the last. The company couldnt be trusted. Says the employee to the employer: Its not me; its you.
A 2026 report from McLean & Company called change fatigue an operational nightmare. The scholars who studied the relationship between repetitive changes and employee resistance likened executives tendency to reorganize to a gambling habit.
When there is no achievementonly work
Work is becoming less repetitive. Automation and reorgs and reskilling mean that what we did yesterday, or the way we did it, is not what well do tomorrow. Software engineers dont have to write every line of code, recruiters dont have to review every application, and customer service reps no longer have to review and tag every ticketan AI agent can do all of that.
So the ennui felt in the modern workplace is not the result of tedium, but of constant change that wipes out the progress of the individual. Why climb yet another hill only to find yourself at the bottom again? There is no achievementonly work.
In 1942’s The Myth of Sisyphus, philosopher Albert Camus describes two natural responses to the meaninglessness of toil: that the suffering will either redeem or defeat. But he prescribes something else: defiance.
Camus believed that the most important part of the story is when Sisyphus descends the hill, fully aware of the useless task ahead. What is he thinking? One must imagine Sisyphus happy, he writes, not glibly. Happy, because he recognizes how absurd his situation is. Happy, because he is free from illusion.
Thats Camus definition of defiance. Defiance for the 21st century worker may be rejecting the illusion that work must be meaningful to make the worker meaningful.
The gods in the myth of Sisyphus demanded the climb. Todays gods demand the climb, but also the method, the enthusiasm, and the willingness to pretend it will last.
They should not be surprised when workers stop pretending.
When we minimize our suffering with statements like I shouldnt complainothers have it much harder than me, it can seem evolved, empathetic, even wise. In professional culture, this phrase often earns admiration. It signals gratitude, resilience, and perspective. However, beneath that polished humility lies a psychological defense mechanism that can quietly block emotional growth.
That mindset reflects a subtle form of emotional bypassing, which is the tendency to sidestep uncomfortable emotions by rationalizing them away. This ends up muting, rather than healing. It may seem like a sign of maturity. However, empathy bypassing often prevents us from engaging honestly with our own reality, particularly in high-performance environments where vulnerability already feels risky.
The psychology of bypassing
The term bypassing comes from psychologist John Welwood, who described spiritual bypassing in the 1980s as the use of spiritual or moral reasoning to avoid painful emotions. In modern workplaces, bypassing shows up less as spirituality and more as rationalization. Its the act of layering gratitude or perspective over stress until feelings become invisible.
Bypassing certainly played a part in my journey toward a catastrophic burnout as a corporate finance lawyer. When colleagues around me experienced layoffs, I buried my misery. Complaining about my situation as a high-flying young solicitor at a Magic Circle firm felt indulgent, and potentially dangerous to my career.
This kind of thinking might seem admirable, but research shows that emotional suppression increases stress responses rather than soothing them. Avoidance may feel like composure in the short term, but over time, failing to acknowledge what were feeling can amplify pressure and fatigue.
Why ‘others have it harder’ feels so right to say
Its easy to see why this phraseology feels comforting. After all, it comes with values we admiregratitude, compassion, and humility. Recognizing that others face greater obstacles fosters perspective and keeps self-pity in check, which are two vital traits for emotional intelligence. However, when this sentiment becomes habitual, it can cross an invisible line from awareness to avoidance.
Psychologist Kristin Neff notes that true self-compassion depends on acknowledging sufferingnot ranking it. When we tell ourselves our pain is less valid because others have it worse, were confusing empathy with denial. We treat compassion as a zero-sum game, where we see attending to our own emotions as somehow stealing from others. In truth, self-compassion is critical to our capacity to express compassion to those around us. By acknowledging our own pain, we improve our ability to have a genuine understanding of anothers.
When empathy becomes avoidance
Empathy bypassing is one of the most elegantand dangerousforms of denial. When we minimize our emotions, we distort the feedback loop that helps us understand our limits and boundaries. Over time, what begins as realism morphs into guilt.
A 2019 study found that people who habitually minimize their own distress report greater anxiety and reduced well-being. The protective act of keeping perspective can end up silently draining your mental health. In professional settings, this often manifests as people downplaying the level of stress theyre experiencing or leaders who feel undeserving of support. They tell themselves theyre gratefulbut that gratitude quietly erases their need for care. It causes us to isolate, creating even further harm.
Ive noticed this tendency in myself recently in light of global events. Gratitude is an invaluable psychological experience, and building it consciously improves perspective. But when it acts as a lightning rod for all our suffering, it can drastically undermine our emotional well-being.
The paradox is that when were empathy bypassing, we seem composed. In fact, the opposite is happening; were actually detached. It might look like strength, but its often suppression. And while culture might reward suppression, it actually ends up reducing both resilience and innovation, which are two qualities that workforces rely on most.
The cultural cost of constant perspective
Many organizations unintentionally reinforce this pattern through what might be called performative positivity. Gratitude campaigns, resilience bootcamps, and culture slogans about toughness can (if you dont implement them effectively) make emotional honesty feel out of bounds at work.
When others have it harder becomes an unspoken moral code, employees begin to silence legitimate concerns. Burnout turns into a badge of endurance. People start seeing expressions of vulnerability as complaints. The result is a well-intentioned culture that values gratitudebut punishes truth.
This is where psychological safety comes in. Workplaces where people feel free to express emotions and admit struggle are more collaborative and productive. When employees believe that only unshakeable optimism is acceptable, performance may rise temporarily, but authenticity declines. This leads to a slow erosion of trust disguised as high engagement.
The key to balancing gratitude and honesty
To move past self-bypassing, we need to treat empathy for others and honesty with ourselves as complementary, not contradictory. The key is integration and allowing multiple realities to exist at once. We can be grateful for having work and still find that work exhausting. We can recognize that someone else is struggling more severely and still acknowledge our frustration or disappointment. Emotional integrity lies in holding both truths without collapsing one into the other.
Practicing a more honest form of kindness
So how can professionals engage with their struggles without slipping into self-erasure? Start by noticing how often gratitude includes a but. Instead of thinking, Im stressed, but others have it worse, try, Im stressed, and others have it worse. That small changereplacing but with andcreates space for paradox and complexity. It permits you to feel whats true without diminishing empathy for others.
Leaders can model this integration publicly. Admitting limits isnt weakness: its acknowledging psychological reality. By acknowledging your own pressures without minimizing them, you create environments where emotional honesty coexists with performance. Plenty of research showsthat self-compassion actually strengthens motivation and resilience, not erodes them. The same principle applies across teams: Acknowledging difficulty deepens accountability, because people who feel seen and valued tend to feel engaged, too.
The importance of feeling fully
Theres nothing inherently wrong with acknowledging that others have it harderbut kindness without self-inclusion becomes self-neglect. In a culture obsessed with optimism, the quiet act of acknowledging ones limits can be a radical form of strength. You dont build real resilience through comparison, you forge it through integrationthe ability to stand firmly in ones humanity, even when others suffering looms larger.
When we stop ranking pain and start recognizing it, we trade moral comfort for genuine integrity. And in doing so, we not only become kinder humanswe become more honest ones too.
