It’s strange how often our lives seem like a dream—or a nightmare—that we’re somehow wide awake in but powerless to change. I keep having this reoccurring dream, and it’s like some deep part of me is throwing up a flare, saying, “Wake up; there’s more to see.” The dream always starts the same. I pull myself out of bed, half-conscious, with a vague sense of dread. It’s dark outside, and I’ve already missed the bus. I wait for the next one, but the city is empty, a lifeless blur of faces that look like shadows—people I don’t even recognize.
Eventually, I make it to the office as the sun starts to rise, but instead of warmth, it fills me with a hollow ache. I walk through the same gray corridors, sit down at the same desk, and the day ticks on, every second a meaningless click of time I’ll never get back. Lunch breaks are just a ritual of wandering, desperately trying to find some clarity. When I finally go home on a bus that feels like it’s sinking under the weight of my own exhaustion, I collapse into bed, staring at the ceiling, drained but not just physically. It’s a soul-deep kind of numbness. Then I realize something chilling—it’s not a nightmare. This is my life.
It’s easy to see how this conditioning—a kind of societal hypnosis—pulls us in, convincing us this is what it means to be “successful,” a “good citizen.” Society’s blueprint is so deeply ingrained that questioning it feels radical, even dangerous. We’re fed the narrative that the 9-to-5 grind, the endless cycle of meetings, metrics, and meaningless tasks, is all part of life. But at what cost? There’s this ever-present lie that work equals purpose, that trading our time for a paycheck is somehow noble. But deep down, the truth is there, whispering to us in quiet moments or, in my case, in these haunting dreams. The so-called “security” of a job is just another layer of illusion.
We’re constantly told that our work defines us, but does it? People go along with it, ignoring the fact that we’re just cogs in a larger machine, a system that grinds on, needing us only as long as we’re useful. We live with the unspoken knowledge that we’re disposable, as demonstrated by mass layoffs like Google and Meta cutting thousands of jobs without a second thought. And yet, people still cling to the notion that these companies care about us, that we’re part of some kind of corporate “family.” It’s a fantasy we’re encouraged to believe because the alternative is far more terrifying: we’re nothing more than assets, disposable and interchangeable.
If you think about it, it’s no different from the wrestling fan who knows it’s all staged but still wants to believe in the storyline. We go to work, play our parts, even cheer along, even as our spirit gets chipped away by the repetitive grind. The truth is, our hours, our energy, our lives—they’re all being converted into someone else’s profit. They say they care about people, about the planet, but let’s be real—it’s about the bottom line. We’re the hands on the clock of someone else’s success.
The idea of a 40-hour work week, of working ourselves to the bone just to keep going—it’s a construct designed to keep us compliant. And here’s the paradox: we work to live, yet end up living to work. We’re sold a “secure” lifestyle, but at what point does that security become a cage? This isn’t life—it’s survival, a slow burn of potential fading in a cubicle, on a production line, or behind a counter. What’s really frightening is how well we’ve adapted, how deeply we’ve internalized this way of life as “just the way things are.”
There’s a concept in storytelling called the “Special Audience Cognitive Leap,” where just a couple of lines bridge impossible gaps in logic. Society does the same thing: “Work hard, and life will reward you.” But we’re not in a movie; life doesn’t magically make sense if we just keep at it. The disconnect between what we’re told and what we experience builds up over time, eroding our trust in the system that’s supposed to support us. It’s the feeling of walking through life like a dream, doing what’s expected while wondering when we’ll finally wake up.
And waking up is terrifying. It’s the moment you see through the narrative, recognize the wage slavery for what it is. It’s not about being a “good citizen” or even a productive member of society; it’s about keeping a machine running that only values us for the output we produce. This cycle, this system, wasn’t built with our fulfillment in mind—it was built for productivity, for profit. We’re meant to be happy with weekends and the occasional vacation, but even that isn’t enough to recharge when the work itself is draining us to our core.
So, where do we go from here? There’s a point where we have to decide whether we’re going to keep going along with the charade or start writing a new story. This awakening doesn’t mean throwing out everything; it means seeing social conditioning as what it is—a tool that served us as children but needs serious updating if we’re going to live authentically as adults. We can begin to choose, piece by piece, which parts of the narrative serve us and which hold us back.
That recurring nightmare—the one where I realize my life is a hollow loop—serves as a wake-up call. It’s not that I’m trapped; it’s that I’ve been conditioned to accept a life that feels like entrapment. I don’t want my days to be a countdown of hours traded for dollars. I want to build something real, something meaningful, something of my own. For many of us, the biggest obstacle is recognizing that we have the power to redefine what work, purpose, and security mean.
The truth is, every hour spent on someone else’s dream is an hour lost to building our own. It’s time to reclaim that agency, to question what we’re really giving up every day we choose the familiar over the fulfilling. The life we’ve been sold is just one version of reality—one we can choose to step back from, if we have the courage. Like any good moviegoer, we have to decide when to let the illusion go, to separate the story from the truth, and start living in a way that’s aligned with our values, not just the bottom line.
In the end, it’s about recognizing that this “wage slave” life isn’t inevitable. There is more out there than the steady, soul-numbing routine we’ve been trained to accept. The real journey begins when we start to choose for ourselves, to take each step forward with intention and purpose. That’s the awakening that breaks the spell, the moment we realize that while the system may not want us to, we can opt out of the script we’ve been handed.