A civil engineer learns early that every structure has a limit. A bridge carries its own weight, the traffic moving across it and the forces of wind. Design is therefore not about making a structure capable of carrying everything. It is about understanding loads, calculating capacity and providing an appropriate margin of safety. Human beings could learn something from that principle.

Modern life has become an exercise in accumulating loads. We carry professional ambitions, financial obligations, family expectations, social comparisons and an endless stream of information. We are encouraged to add another responsibility, another achievement and another commitment, as though human capacity were infinitely expandable. But structures do not work that way. Neither do people.

In engineering, a load is not necessarily dangerous. A properly designed structure is........

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