A young woman’s lament about the “four-hour life” that she found herself living post-grad went viral earlier this week when Libs of TikTok posted it with the caption “Recent college grad has breakdown over working a job. We’re doomed.”
“I’m probably just being so dramatic and annoying. But this is my first job, like my first nine-to-five job after college and I’m in person and I’m commuting in the city and it takes me f-cking forever to get there,” the woman begins.
She wishes she could simply walk to work but says she can’t “afford living in the city right now.” Instead, the young adult is stuck commuting on a train that leaves well before work begins and arrives after suppertime.
By the time she gets home for the day, the young woman says she’s too exhausted to do anything but “shower, eat my dinner, and go to sleep.”
“I know it could be worse. I know I could be working longer,” the woman continued. “But, like, I literally get off, it’s pitch black. Like I don’t have energy. How do you have friends? Like how do you have time to, like, meet a guy? I don’t know, like, how do you have time for like, dating? I don’t have time for anything and I’m like so stressed out and I’m also getting my period so that’s why I’m all emotional.”
The young woman goes out of her way to clarify that her adulthood epiphany has “nothing to do with my job at all.” She’s simply adjusting to the fact that her corporate employer (which likely hates women and everything normal Americans stand for) will control much of her schedule for an indefinite amount of time.
Yet, commentators like Libs of TikTok still clocked the woman’s ill-advised on-camera meltdown as an unwillingness to work or an emotional weakness that could not withstand first-world growing pains.
There are plenty of lazy and entitled people out there who simply don’t want to work and know that the government will eagerly line their pockets with taxpayer money indefinitely.
This woman appears to be none of those things.
Her problem is not with working hard but with modernity and how the problems that came with it stripped her life of meaning. It’s time to make a change. Moving away from the city is the easiest, most effective way out and something she should be willing to consider if she genuinely wants to start addressing the frustrations she complains about.
You Can’t Buy Happiness
Because she works in an expensive big city and has to shuttle herself back and forth, this gal feels like she has no time to invest in the things and people that matter.
She longs for a life with love and purpose but, as she’s already discovered, she’s likely not going to find that in the corporate world. If that aspect of her life doesn’t change, she knows the soul-sucking work-eat-sleep-repeat thing she has going on now could easily become her eternity.
That’s enough to send any sane person spiraling.
Federalist contributor and pastor Hans Fiene put it best when he identified the woman as “crying the tears of Ecclesiastes, not the tears of sloth.”
“If we want to build up the next generation, let’s not mock those struggling with loneliness by accusing them of laziness,” he wrote.
Young people are lonelier now more than ever. Their sadness is primarily rooted in their “lack of friends or community” and “lack of purpose.” Current economic conditions and the fact that new adults like the young lady in the video did a lot of their coming of age in the throes of government-mandated lockdowns only exacerbate their isolation issues.
That’s not a crime that deserves the scorn of older generations. It’s an opportunity for those of us who have found purpose through faith, community, and family to show her an escape route.
Work Smarter
By all measures, the weeping woman appears to have done the “right” things — the things that parents, professors, and society said would make her successful. She went to college, earned a degree, and then secured a job without falling into the trap of perpetual studenthood.
Yet, she still feels unfulfilled for the majority of her day-to-day life.
Too many youngsters take jobs in crime-ridden hellholes because the movies and books tell them it’s cool and a good career choice. Women especially are sold the modern girl-boss, “lean in” lie that a fulfilling life means dooming their souls and bodies to a cubicle.
As marriage rates tumble, inflation spikes, and housing becomes less and less affordable for even the average American, new adults slave away for years at a desk for a boss they may never meet just so they can barely pay the bills.
Eventually, the “existential terror” of being cooped up in a high rise staring at a screen all day settles in. When the next generation of corporate America’s workers finally look up from their draining commute-work-lunch-work-commute cycle, they are 35 years old with no love life, no children (and rapidly declining fertility), and nothing of real value.
This gal is already off to a good start because she’s having this realization now, in her early 20s.
If she makes the right kinds of changes still has plenty of time create a meaningful life. If she doesn’t make any changes, she won’t make friends or date. That means her chances of getting married and whisked off to a peaceful suburban area in an income-tax-free state plummet drastically.
To live a meaningful life means making sacrifices. Young women especially must start by ditching the “Sex and the City” pipe dream and move from their closet apartment in that trendy, but more importantly, expensive urban hub.
People who live in smaller, rural towns are automatically much happier than their city-dwelling peers. The same goes for people who regularly attend and become involved in a local church.
From there, they should find a job with a small business or a traditional company that isn’t beholden to woke “ESG” rules and offers flexibility to families. An even better solution is to find a husband who is willing to offer his love and paycheck so his wife can comfortably raise her children and keep their home.
Eliminating that pesky commute and settling down with someone who is willing to share the emotional burden of adulthood frees up young women’s time to invest in the things that really matter.
The good life isn’t easy. It takes a lot of work and sacrifice to build a life worth living. But at least that work and sacrifice has benefits that go beyond a paycheck.
