The Weight We Carry
written by: Ginny M. Jones
Our ancestors cried out for rain. We cry out for connection, then wait for something real to answer back. They braved wolves in the wild. We brave thoughts in the dark, algorithms in our veins, debt in our lungs, and false fires that burn but never warm. We traded one danger for another; the wild for the web.
They saw monsters in visions; we face them in suits and on screens, in boardrooms and bedrooms, in branding. In policies dressed as “protection,” ski-masks for the wealthy and powerful, and in strangers on the street, repeating the narrative like it’s gospel.
I do not say this to diminish what came before. They bore their suffering with a rawness we can hardly comprehend, but I do not think they could have predicted this, this deliberate drowning of the soul in noise, in scarcity, in endless performance.
This is the brave new world “They” created for us. A world of starving hearts and molded minds. We’re told to follow our hearts like they’re beacons, but a starving heart will leap into any flame that feels like warmth. A starving heart can mistake intensity for sincerity.
And the mind? The mind has been shaped in the image of our captors, trained to consume, to crave approval, to obey quietly, to call the cage “home.” This is why we struggle. Not because we’re weak, but because our instruments have been tampered with; hearts have lost their “true North,” and minds change with each turn of the wind.
That burden that you feel is not failure. It’s friction. It’s the friction of still being human in a machine that demands you forget. The friction of ignoring what your soul needs so you can give to this world all it wants. It’s the friction of reaching for stability and finding instead a different flavor of captivity.
It’s the despair of needing a job to survive and being too broken by the job to do it well. It’s the strain between living in fight-or-flight and trying to heal while the vultures circle above. It’s the tension between fighting in survival mode and fighting to survive survival mode. It’s the torment of fearing judgment while already serving the sentence; dreading hell while living in it.
So no, I’ll never again say, “Follow your heart.” Not in this world. Not where it stands. Instead, I will say, “Follow whatever keeps your heart alive. Follow what keeps your soul intact. Follow what doesn’t extinguish your breath or your spirit.” Follow what gives you space to think, to recover, to build, because the real truth is that this world, our world, has been designed to break our will. To break you.
And if I see fire—in the eyes of another who has not yet forgotten their soul, in the hands of one still willing to reach down, in the quiet one, the broken one, the one who still remembers a time when the world wasn’t numb, I will not look away.
I will stand in the knowing with them. I will celebrate the humanity in them. I know what they carry. I know what it costs. And if their light flickers, I will guard it with my own. Not to save them — but in answer to the signal they didn’t know they were still sending.
- The Weight We Carry - January 27, 2026
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