Sometimes I wonder if we have forgotten what it feels like to live without calculating.

Before leaving the house, you calculate transport.

At the market, you calculate what to remove.

At work, you calculate how much of your salary can survive the month.

Even happiness sometimes comes with calculation.

Can I afford this?

There was a time when wanting something was enough reason to hope for it.

Now, wanting something is only the beginning of another question:

How much will it cost me?

I have watched people become tired without ever having the luxury of admitting they are tired.

A father who returns home late and still asks what is left for dinner.

A mother who quietly stretches one meal into two.

A graduate who keeps sending applications until the rejection emails begin to feel personal.

A young person who watches someone their age leave the country and wonders whether they are happy for them or simply wishing they had the same chance.

And somehow, we keep going.

That may be one of the most beautiful and painful things about us.

We complain about the country in the morning and still wake up the next morning to try again.

We joke about the things that hurt us because sometimes laughter is cheaper than therapy.

We call ourselves strong.

But I sometimes wonder if strength is always a blessing.

Because when a people become too good at surviving, the world can begin to forget that they deserve to live.

Perhaps that is where the real struggle lies.

Not only in the empty pockets, the broken systems, the rising prices, or the opportunities that seem to belong to someone else.

But in what all of it slowly does to the person carrying it.

You begin to lower your expectations.

You stop asking for comfort and start asking only for enough.

Enough money.

Enough food.

Enough electricity.

Enough peace to sleep.

Enough hope to wake up and try again.

And maybe one day, without noticing, you realise that your biggest dream is no longer to have a good life.

It is simply to have a life that doesn't feel like something you have to fight for every single day.

Still, tomorrow will come.

Someone will open their shop.

Someone will board a bus.

Someone will submit another application.

Someone will send money home.

Someone will whisper, “It will be better.”

And we will believe them.

Maybe because we have to.

Because sometimes, in a place where survival has become a daily conversation, hope is the only thing we can still afford to carry.

And I wonder;

how long can a person keep calling it hope before they realise they have simply become accustomed to waiting?