PEOPLE ARE WALKING AROUND LIKE ZOMBIES.

Eyes glazed over. Souls dimmed. Completely disconnected from themselves and the world right in front of them.

I saw it everywhere in New York City. Crowds moving like programmed machines, heads down, locked into their screens, crossing streets without even looking up.

No presence.
No awareness.
Just that vacant, hollow stare.

But this isn’t just New York.

It feels like the entire world has been affected by an epidemic of exhaustion, apathy and loss of joy.

Zombie-ism, if you will.

And I can’t help but wonder about the true causes.
Because maybe people aren’t simply tired.

Maybe they’re overwhelmed by a way of living that human beings were never designed for.

Modern-day slavery didn’t disappear.

It just became harder to recognize.

No chains.
No whips.
No auction blocks.

Instead, we have debt sold as success.

Mortgages. Car payments. Credit cards. Student loans. Rising costs. Two incomes barely keeping households afloat.

People working jobs they hate because they can’t afford to stop.

Hustle praised as ambition.

Exhaustion normalized.

Rest mistaken for laziness.

And every spare moment turned into another opportunity to produce, monetize, scroll, consume or escape.

People wake up tired, work all day, come home depleted, stare at screens, numb themselves however they can, go to sleep and repeat it all again.

They’re functioning.
But they’re not functioning optimally.

They’re surviving.
And when the nervous system spends years living under financial pressure, chronic stress, overstimulation and the feeling that you can never stop, eventually the body adapts.

You stop feeling alive.
You just keep going.

But I think there’s another layer to this conversation that very few people want to touch.

Look at what we’re exposed to from childhood onward.

Highly processed food.
Poisoned water and air.
Vaccines.
Chemicals. Constant artificial stimulation. Screens. Social media. Chronic sleep disruption. And an ever-growing list of other pharmaceutical interventions.

Look at our children. Vaccination schedules have expanded dramatically over the decades, while diagnoses of autism, ADHD and learning disabilities have also risen. I believe we should be able to ask difficult questions about everything affecting developing brains without being attacked for asking them.

Then we have antidepressants, benzodiazepines, stimulants, statins and other medications that can affect mood, cognition, motivation or emotional experience…remembrance of who we are.

Even some treatments people would never associate with emotion or pleasure are being studied for possible effects on reward, motivation and mood.

How much are all of these things contributing to what we’re seeing?

How much is lifestyle?
How much is chronic stress?
How much is financial pressure?
How much is technology?
How much is what we’re putting into our bodies?
How much is what we’ve removed from our lives?

Sunlight. Movement. Nature. Community. Purpose. Human touch. Eye contact. Real food. Quiet. Rest. Connection.

I live in a beautiful community in Southern California, where the sun pours in like life itself, yet I see people shutting it out. Blinds closed all day. Homes dim and lifeless, as if we’re hiding from the very things that help remind our bodies that we’re alive.

I can’t relate to that.

I crave light.
I crave connection.

A smile. Eye contact. A simple moment of acknowledgment can shift someone’s entire day, and yet it feels like a lost art.

We spent three years in Florida, and I felt the contrast there too. The energy often felt heavy to me. People going through the motions, disconnected and burdened.

And New York City, my hometown, feels like an entirely different planet.

Fast. Cold. Overstimulated.
And strangely empty all at once.

Maybe the greatest trick of modern society was convincing exhausted, overstimulated and disconnected people that this is simply what adulthood feels like.

It isn’t.

Human beings were meant to do more than work, pay bills, consume, numb themselves and repeat.

We were meant to LIVE.

To feel.
To connect.
To experience joy.
To notice the person standing next to us.
To feel the sun on our faces.
To actually be present for our own lives.

And the question that keeps rising for me is this:

Can we come back from this?

Can humanity remember what it feels like to be alive, awake, present and connected?

I want to believe the answer is yes. But when you really look around, you have to wonder just how far we’ve drifted.

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