Be careful not to let memes define who you are.
I don't know when it started, but we've gotten into the habit of saying "worker" and "beast of burden" all the time. When chatting with friends, it's all we talk about: "We workers like us, just get by."
At first it seemed hilarious—everyone self-deprecating together, relieving stress and feeling close. But later I realized, as we kept saying it, it seemed to come true.
This label, without us noticing, really stuck to us and can't be peeled off. It affects our attitude toward work and life. When something comes up, our first reaction isn't "How do I solve this?" but "I'm just a worker, forget it."
Notice it? We start to feel justified in lowering our standards for ourselves, and frantically find reasons for our inaction.
We think: anyway, everyone is equally bad, so my being bad is only natural.
I'm not against lying flat. In this era, choosing a low-desire, comfortable lifestyle is completely fine.
But the premise is: this lying flat must be a brave choice we make after careful thought and weighing the pros and cons. Not in the back-and-forth of playing with memes, being boiled like a frog in warm water, gradually forgetting who we originally were and who we could have become.