Working Yourself to Death

You get up in the morning and work. You work through the day, through the evening, sometimes through the night. You work when you are sick. You work when your body has long since stopped cooperating. And when someone asks why you do this, you have a hundred good reasons — responsibility, necessity, duty. But none of those reasons explains why you cannot stop.

Medically, the phenomenon is well documented. In Japan there is a dedicated word for it: karoshi — death by overwork. Heart failure, stroke, collapse. The body gives up because it can no longer go on. But the real question is not why the body gives up. The question is why you push it that far.

Whoever works themselves to death is not fighting for a project. They are fighting for their right to exist.