The Cost of Every Movement

How many motors do you rely on every day? More than you think. The toothbrush in your bathroom. The fan in your laptop. The compressor in your fridge. The pump in your coffee machine.

Your car has at least thirty motors. A data center has thousands. Even the loaf of bread you bought this morning was made possible by an army of motors—planting, harvesting, milling, kneading, baking, packaging, transporting.

Before motors, there were muscles. Before automation, there was exhaustion. Every action required labor—food converted into energy, burned by human hands, oxen, horses. Every movement came at a cost.

The world before motors was a world of suffering.

There was a time when computer wasn’t a thing; it was a job. People spent their lives crunching numbers—eating, sleeping, working, so their brains could do what a machine now does in an instant.

But then we started harnessing energy differently. We swapped muscle for motors, neurons for circuits. Now, we pull power from the sun, the wind, the tides. We move atoms with electricity. We compute bits without a single wasted calorie.

The world runs on motors now. Quiet, invisible, efficient.

But here’s the paradox: with all this power, all this leverage, we still choose the caloric world. We run for the sake of running. We knead bread by hand when we could buy it. We lift weights when there’s nothing left to lift. We burn energy for no other reason than because we can.

Why? Because electric energy gave us something muscle never could: freedom.

Freedom to decide how we use our effort. Freedom to work less but think more. Freedom to live deliberately.

So next time you reach for a tool, a switch, a machine—pause. Appreciate it. Consider what it has freed you from. Consider what it has freed you for.

Because, as the Stoics remind us, gratitude is the key to happiness. And when you see the world clearly, you realize: you have a lot to be grateful for.