Not Forever

When you have a job,

think of yourself as an infant.

Your salary arrives

like milk.

Warm.

Reliable.

Enough to keep you alive.

Milk is a gift to an infant.

Not a destiny.

An infant that clings to milk forever

never learns the language of hunger,

never reaches for fire,

never discovers hands were made to hunt,

to plant,

to build.

So it is with a salary.

It keeps you breathing,

but it does not teach you how to eat

when the bottle disappears.

Stay too long at the breast of comfort

and fear replaces curiosity.

You wait to be fed

instead of learning how to feed yourself.

Milk is a beginning.

Not a future.

One day, the bottle must fall,

not as punishment,

but as permission.

Permission to chew.

Permission to fail.

Permission to learn

what sustains you

without being handed to you.

A job can raise you.

But it cannot grow you.

Growth begins the moment

you stop asking for milk

and start asking yourself:

How do I feed myself

when no one is holding the bottle?