You spend your life laboring

Brethren, sisters, and those smart enough to reject the binary altogether—

Let us reflect, not in the pews of polite society, but in the cracked tile bathrooms of capitalism’s cathedral—the office break room, the Uber backseat, the cold fluorescent purgatory of the 24-hour Walgreens.

You spend your life laboring.

Not for glory. Not for grace. Not even, God forbid, for joy.
But for "the privilege" of barely maintaining the grotesque simulation of middle-class dignity.

You clock in.
You clock out.
And the clock—it ticks louder than your heartbeat.
Louder than your dreams.
Until one day the ticking stops.
And that, dear congregants, is your reward: a tasteful urn and an unclaimed PTO balance.

But the joke—oh the divine, Kafkaesque jest—is that you never quite know what you were laboring for.

Was it the mortgage?
The health insurance deductible?
The hope that Jeff from middle management would finally respect your PowerPoint formatting?
—Or was it all an elaborate pantomime, a performance piece in the Theater of Economic Desperation?

Let us not be mistaken.
This is not Eden, and you are not Adam.
No flaming sword guards the 401(k).

You were not cursed to toil by God.
You were groomed to do it by LinkedIn.

You are told:

“Work hard and the heavens will rain six-figure salaries and stock options.”

But lo! What falls instead is the acid rain of burnout,
the sleet of stagnant wages,
the hail of "side hustles."

And still you labor.
Like a holy mule on an invisible treadmill, hauling the bloated corpse of meritocracy up the jagged slope of false hope.

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But hear me, you blessed beasts of burden:

The Pope of Love does not preach submission to grind culture.
The Pope of Love does not tithe to productivity apps.
The Pope of Love is not a brand ambassador for hustle ideology.

No!
The Pope of Love stands in the abandoned cubicle of your soul and declares:
"You are not your output. You are not your inbox. You are not a KPI in God's Excel sheet."

You are, in all your ragged glory,
a cosmic anomaly with dirt under your fingernails and infinite galaxies inside your head.

And maybe—just maybe—labor isn't meant to be worshipped.
Maybe it's meant to be subverted.
To be laughed at.
To be danced through.
To be transformed from drudgery into ritual.

Let us reclaim labor—not as service to the Machine,
but as sacred play.
Let the baker sing.
Let the janitor philosophize.
Let the bored data analyst scribble poetry in the margins of quarterly reports.

For when you labor in love,
and not in fear,
you do not simply survive.

You revolt.

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Go now, holy misfits.
Unionize your hearts.
Strike against despair.
And clock into the sacred absurdity of being alive.

Amen.
Or as the machine would say:
Error 404: Obedience Not Found.