Thanks so much for sharing. Yes, I have a morning routine which includes 30 minutes meditation and journaling.
I still hold strong that we are living in a society that does not allow us to truly thrive. For example, if you used to be the town baker...and you made bad bread one week, everyone in the town would know. There was a connection between your work, pride, and your place in a community. Now what? People are social media managers or digital marketers for products they dont care about and are such a small cog in an abstract machine. My parents bought their first house at 22 with shitty blue collar jobs....and if they lost that job they could just get another one. I was 33 before paying off 50K in student loans.
The average home in Canada in 1.2 million dollars. I have zero chance even with a high stress job to afford a home in my own country. Retirement? good fucking like with contract work and this new economy. Its not anxiety and depression...its foxes in a cage.
I agree @brbgoingforawalk it's tough and it's getting tougher.
The true beneficiaries of student loans in the US are the colleges. I don't know what it's like in Canada but in Australia where I grew up we fortunately didn't have the same system. There is a loan in the form of a HECS debt but you only pay it off as a percentage of your income. So if you don't earn you don't pay, if you earn a lot you pay it off more quickly. The interest rate is inflation. This applies a natural cap whereas in the US the universities just keep raising tuition because people just keep indenturing themselves further. It's hard at 18 or 20 to really conceive of what a $50k or $100k loan will be like to pay off.
But it does keep them captive - foxes in a cage ;)
Having said that, I do believe that even the poorest amongst us now live better than the royalty of centuries past. Better conditions, better health, longer lives, cleaner, easier access to food, safer from violence as well as in the work place. We may not be any happier now but comparatively speaking, for the animals that we humans are, life is better. IMHO.