Born in a Garden, Living in a Machine

 

It’s strange when you really think about it. Earth almost feels perfectly set up for human life. Water literally falls from the sky. Food grows from the ground. Trees produce fruit without invoices. Rivers flow without subscriptions. The sun rises every morning without sending a bill. If you look at nature long enough, it feels generous. Abundant. Almost effortless.

And yet, here we are.

Living in a world where survival seems to require passwords, credit scores, job contracts, performance reviews, and 40-hour work weeks. You need approval to build. You need money to eat. You need documentation to exist properly. Somehow, between rainfall and mango trees, we built a system that feels like a machine.

It creates a strange emotional tension.

On one hand, the planet itself looks like a gift. On the other hand, participation in modern society feels like a subscription plan you can’t cancel. You can’t just step outside and gather what you need. Land is owned. Water is regulated. Food is priced. Shelter is financed. Even time feels scheduled and monetized.

It makes you pause and ask: How did we get here?

Part of the answer is scale. When humans lived in small communities, survival was direct. You planted. You hunted. You built. Your work had a clear connection to your life. If you farmed, you ate. If you built shelter, you slept safely. Cause and effect were visible.

But as populations grew, things became more complex. You can’t have millions of people in cities all farming their own land. You need coordination. You need systems. Money replaced barter because you can’t trade chickens in an apartment building. Banks replaced trust between neighbors because modern societies are built among strangers.

The machine wasn’t built overnight. It evolved as a solution to complexity.

Still, even if it makes sense, it doesn’t always feel natural.

There’s something deeply human about wanting simplicity. We are wired for sunlight, movement, conversation, and visible results. Instead, many people spend their days staring at screens, attending meetings, or moving numbers from one column to another. The connection between effort and survival feels abstract. You work hard, but you don’t grow your food. You earn money, but the value feels symbolic rather than tangible.

That disconnect can create quiet frustration.

It’s not necessarily that people hate work. Humans actually like contributing. We like building, solving, creating. What we struggle with is feeling like a small, replaceable part inside a system that doesn’t pause for us. The machine keeps running whether we are fulfilled or not.

And then there’s the credit score.

The idea that your financial history determines your access to housing, loans, or opportunities can feel cold. It reduces trust to numbers. It turns reliability into data. In small communities, your reputation was known through relationships. Today, it is calculated through algorithms.

Again, it works. But it feels mechanical.

At the same time, it’s important to be honest about something. Nature is beautiful, but it is not always gentle. Yes, rain falls from the sky. But sometimes it doesn’t. Droughts happen. Floods happen. Crops fail. Disease spreads. The natural world can be abundant and brutal at the same time.

Modern systems, for all their flaws, have brought stability. Hospitals exist. Food can be transported across continents. Clean water can be piped into homes. Electricity lights up the night. The same “machine” that demands a 40-hour work week also allows billions of people to live longer and safer lives than most humans in history.

So the tension is not simple.

We are caught between two truths. The Earth feels like a gift. The system feels like a contract. One feels organic. The other feels engineered.

Maybe the discomfort comes from losing touch with the first while being overwhelmed by the second.

Many people feel trapped not because society exists, but because they feel disconnected from meaning. When your work feels purposeful, when you see how it helps others, when it aligns with your values, the machine doesn’t feel like a prison. It feels like participation. But when work becomes purely transactional—hours for money, money for survival—the soul grows tired.

We weren’t designed just to earn. We were designed to live.

To feel sunlight. To connect. To rest. To create. To belong.

Perhaps the real challenge is not escaping the system entirely. Most of us cannot simply walk away from bills and responsibilities. The challenge is learning how to remain human inside the structure. To carve out spaces of simplicity. To grow something small, even if it’s just a plant on a balcony. To spend time in nature. To build relationships that feel real.

The machine may be necessary, but it doesn’t have to define our entire identity.

We are more than credit scores. More than job titles. More than weekly schedules.

The rain still falls freely. The sun still rises without permission. The earth still grows food from soil.

Remembering that doesn’t erase the system. But it reminds us that beneath all the paperwork and payments, we are still creatures of a generous planet, trying to balance structure with soul.

And maybe the goal isn’t to destroy the machine. Maybe it’s to make sure we don’t forget the garden or have a choice to live in the garden.