I want you to imagine something. Bacon was never invented. It doesn't exist. And then tomorrow — someone launches it. Strips of cured, salted pork fat, fried until aggressively crunchy, served at breakfast.

What would the reviews be?

I genuinely believe they would be mixed at best. It is extremely salty, extremely fatty, aggressively textured, and so loud in flavor that you can't even tell what you're tasting — is it the salt? The grease? The crunch? It's all three hitting at once with no apology.

But bacon has been around forever. And because it's been around forever, it became untouchable. Society collectively decided it was perfect — and that consensus became culture. And culture became identity. And now "bacon lover" is a personality type.

This isn't really about bacon. It's about how long something has to exist before we stop questioning it. We inherit opinions the same way we inherit traditions — without asking why.

Say you don't like bacon at a brunch table. Notice what happens. That reaction — that mild social outrage — is the whole point. We didn't choose this opinion. We were handed it.

In Arabic, there's a greeting — السلام عليكم, Salam Alaykum. And the response is always وعليكم السلام, Wa Alaykum Salam. It's automatic. It's instinct. You acknowledge someone when they speak to you. Not because you have to. Because it's human.

Ghosting — completely ignoring another person as if they don't exist, as if they never reached out — is now the accepted way to end things. We're told silence speaks for itself. We're told it's easier. We're told it's just how it is now.

But I want to ask: easier for who? Because the person on the receiving end of the silence doesn't get closure. They get a void. And we decided that's acceptable because the alternative — saying something, acknowledging someone — felt like too much effort.

We built entire languages, entire social codes, entire cultures around the idea that people deserve to be seen when they speak. And then we invented the smartphone and forgot all of it. That's not evolution. That's the opposite.

Speed is exciting. A relationship that moves fast has energy, momentum, intensity — it feels like something is happening. And there's something genuinely alive about that. I'm not here to take it away from you.

But here's the thing about crashes. Moving too fast means you skip steps. You skip the part where you find out who someone is when things are boring. When things are hard. When the excitement settles and you're just two people in a room.

And then there's the slow burn. Which I love. The long story, the build, the patience — Shania Twain wrote a whole song about it and it's beautiful. You're still the one. All those years.

But I want to ask: was it really that long? Or did it just feel long because you weren't moving? Because there's a version of slow that's intentional and romantic — and there's a version of slow that's two people who got comfortable and confused comfort with direction.

Every relationship deserves a moment where you stop and ask honestly: are we building something? Or are we just here? That question isn't scary. Avoiding it is.

There is a bottle being sold right now — you've seen it — with little markers on the side telling you how much water you should have consumed by 10am. By noon. By 3pm. A timeline. For water. That your body will ask for when it needs it.

Here's how hydration actually works. You feel thirsty. That is your body telling you it needs water. You drink water. That's it. That's the whole system. It has existed for as long as humans have existed and it has never needed a motivational bottle to function.

We don't eat on a schedule when we're not hungry "just to stay nourished." We eat when we're hungry. The logic is identical. Hunger tells you to eat. Thirst tells you to drink. Your body is not broken. It does not need a product to remind it how to be a body.

Water has no vitamins. No nutrients. It exists to hydrate you when you are dehydrated. Drinking liters of it on a schedule when you are not thirsty doesn't flush toxins or supercharge your cells or give you glowing skin. It gives you one thing: more trips to the bathroom.

That's the whole result. More bathroom trips. And somehow we made that a lifestyle.

You walk into a room. You haven't even finished saying hello. And already someone is telling you your outfit is amazing, your bag is gorgeous, you look incredible. Before they've registered that you're a person they're happy to see — they've assessed you.

This happens almost exclusively in women's friend groups and it has become so automatic that it doesn't mean anything anymore. Everyone knows it doesn't mean anything. Everyone says it anyway. Because not saying it feels wrong — which tells you everything you need to know about whether it's actually genuine.

A reflex is not the same as a feeling. When you automatically compliment someone's shoes before you've even made eye contact, you're not expressing warmth. You're performing it. And the person receiving it knows the difference even if they smile and say thank you.

A sincere compliment — one that comes at the end of an encounter, about something you genuinely noticed and felt something about — that means something. That lands. That's the one people remember. Not the automatic one at the door that everyone gives and nobody means.

Say hello first. Be happy to see the person. The outfit can wait.

Let's start with the obvious. Work is framed as a moral obligation. Not just something you do to survive — something you do to prove you deserve to exist. And if you dare to say out loud that you don't want to do it, or that you simply don't need to, watch what happens.

Here's my logic. Work is a necessity for some and a choice for others. We normalized one — and made the other feel like a crime. If you can sustain yourself without a traditional job, through a partner, through simple living, through whatever means that don't require anyone else's money — you owe nobody an explanation for how you spend your time.

Using social benefits when you genuinely need them? That's what they exist for. But even then, the judgment is instant. You're "stealing from the government," you're "breathing someone's air," you're useless to the economy. The idea that your value as a person is tied directly to what you produce for a system you never agreed to — that's worth questioning.

And here's the part people don't want to say: choosing to marry someone wealthy and not work is a valid choice. Choosing to live simply and quietly without a career is a valid choice. The metrics we use to measure a "successful" life were invented by a society that needed labor. They were never meant to be the definition of worth.

If you're not asking anyone for money — you owe nobody a justification for how you live.