After working so hard, I tell myself I deserve comfort.
To soothe a wounded heart,
I frame indulgence as a reward for stress
an expensive restaurant, luxury goods,
a trip, a stay at a high-end hotel.
“This much extravagance is acceptable,”
I whisper, persuading myself.
But it is worth pausing to ask
whether such spending is truly
an appropriate and efficient form of compensation.
If it is not genuine discretionary income,
but rather the advance consumption
of payment meant for future labor,
then this is no longer comfort.
It becomes reckless, end of the road spending
a step already placed
on the path toward financial collapse.
By telling ourselves,
“I’ve suffered, so I’m allowed,”
and handing the bill to our future selves,
we may endure the present
only to find that what remains in the end
is neither solace nor recovery,
but quiet misery.
We should be wary of this.
A future marinated in dopamine
rarely turns out well.
