When the system you believe in starts working against your values, what do you do? Stay and fight or walk away? Perhaps we need to explore the tension between loyalty and integrity, and why leaving isn’t always giving up. In fact, it might be the most honest stand you have left!
Let me start in a place that probably doesn’t sound philosophical at all: my knees, my back, and my feet. Because when we talk about work, or purpose, or even ethics, we tend to keep it in our heads. We talk about ideas. We talk about values. But the reality is, your body keeps score whether you want it to or not. And when I went from working effectively at home for five years to driving, riding a train, and walking a half mile on concrete for an hour and forty-five minutes each way, every day, my body noticed. It didn’t give a shit about policy changes or leadership priorities. It just knew something was wrong.
But here’s where it gets deeper than just physical strain. What I was experiencing (and what a lot of people experience in situations like this) is something called moral injury. That’s not just stress. It’s not just burnout. Moral injury happens when you are forced to participate in, or stand by while witnessing, actions that violate your core sense of right and wrong. It’s what happens when the work you once believed in is stripped of its meaning, and you’re still expected to show up like nothing has changed.
And this is where that idea from our main episode—the idea of “perishable” versus “imperishable” assets—hits differently. Because in modern life, your most valuable assets aren’t your salary or your title. Your most valuable assets are your time and your health. And when a system starts demanding that you trade those things away for a mission that has been hollowed out… the math changes. What used to feel like dedication can start to look a lot like self-destruction.
So, let’s dive into that… in this episode of Afterthoughts!
