The System and the Self

I used to think I was just awkward.

Turns out, I’m just a brain-rotted little cutie with an earnest temperament trying to play a trust fall with a broken system. I keep showing up with open arms, eyes wide, hoping maybe this time it’ll catch me. Instead, I do another cartoon face plant into the floorboards of capitalism, hierarchy, and “how things have always been.”

Cute!

But lately, something’s shifted. A crack in the algorithm. A glitch in the hierarchy. A whisper of something braver. And it came, of all places, from Kamala Harris.

She Said the Quiet Part Out Loud

She sat down with Stephen Colbert for her first big interview since running for President. And she admitted—admitted—that the system is broken. Not in passing. Not behind closed doors. But on national television. With a tired kind of honesty that felt less like spin and more like surrender.

She didn’t offer spoilers from her upcoming book. Not because she’s withholding, but because I believe she wants to start a sacred dialogue. One that doesn’t boil down to clickbait or party loyalty. When Stephen tried nudging her toward an informal endorsement, she said the truth: Not one person can do this. We have to band together.

I preordered her book so fast I almost sprained a finger.

Because in that moment, I felt less alone. Less gaslit. More like maybe, just maybe, I wasn’t crazy for thinking this whole thing—this performative democracy, this invisible game of power musical chairs—needs a reboot from the inside out.

Don’t Hate the Game—Until You Name the Game

We’re told not to hate the player. Not to hate the game.

Fine. Then let’s at least name the game.

Right now, we live in a capitalistic system that upholds patriarchy, hierarchy, and misogyny. These are not design flaws. They are features. Passed down like family recipes that somehow taste like obligation, resentment, and a side of microaggressions.

But here’s the kicker: we’re still playing. If you have a dollar in your pocket or a Venmo balance or a “passion project” that secretly needs to go viral to pay rent—you’re playing. That’s not shame. That’s reality.

So how do we stay whole inside a system that wants us fragmented? How do we participate without becoming the very thing we hoped to change?

The Cringe and the Cringer

An Instagram voice I now keep in my mental rotation once said:

“Don’t kill the part of you that’s cringe. Kill the part of you that cringes.”

Let that one marinate.

We are terrified of being too much, too earnest, too emotional, too late, too early, too wrong. But every great shift starts with a moment of cringe. Trying something new. Saying something unpopular. Fumbling the baton before you learn to pass it clean.

So go ahead. Be the cringey one at the meeting. The one who asks if there’s a better way. The one who still believes in trying.

That’s not weakness. That’s rebellion.

The Kitchen Changes, But You Have the Food

Amy Poehler, on her podcast Good Hang, recently said something that stopped me in my tracks:

“Life is just a series of terms to keep you out of the room. And then once you learn the terms, you’re in the room.”

She followed it up with this banger:

“The kitchen changes, but you have the food. They’re nothing without the food.”

Mic. Dropped.

She’s talking about access. About how systems gatekeep with language, rules, unspoken codes. But once you learn them? You realize the room needed you all along. You’ve had the food. You are the food.

Whether you’re bringing ideas, leadership, care, art, or truth—what you carry can’t be replicated by someone gaming the system for likes and power. And once you know that? You stop asking for permission to speak.

Fighting From Within (Without Losing Your Soul)

So what does it mean to fight from the inside?

It means learning the rules so you can break them wisely. It means knowing you’re part of a machine, but refusing to become its engine. It means staying soft where the world expects hardness. It means walking into a room built to exclude you and still saying, “I belong here.”

It means being a little cringe sometimes. A little loud. A little idealistic. A little too much.

And doing it anyway.

A Closing Benediction for the Earnest Ones

Raise your hand if you’ve ever tried something new and been awful at it.

Oh… everyone?

Great. Then let’s begin.

This isn’t about perfection. This is about presence. About sacred dialogue. About rewriting the rules from the inside out—not to win a rigged game, but to invent a better one altogether.

Don’t kill the part of you that’s cringe.

Kill the part of you that cringes.

And then—

bring your food.

We’re hungry for it.