You Were Never Meant to Be the Customer

In a system built on consumption, identity is no longer grounded in what we create, but in what we buy. The individual is not viewed as a generative force, but as a vessel for demand; a predictable recipient of ads, trends, and targeted offers. Even labor, once a mark of contribution, has been recast as a cost to be minimized. In this economy, you are not a producer. You are the market.

From birth, we're trained into this role. Entertainment is streamed to us, products are marketed to us, services are tailored to our preferences, and even our social spaces are monetized by the clicks we provide. We are told this is freedom, the freedom to choose among endless variations of the same thing. But choice is not the same as agency. And customization is not the same as ownership.

This consumer identity seeps into everything. It informs how we spend our days, how we understand success, even how we imagine rest. Travel becomes a transaction. Simplicity is reduced to an aesthetic. Creativity is judged by its potential to scale. Slowly, quietly, we begin to believe that our value lies in what we can acquire, optimize, or display. Not in how we see. Not in how we live.

But there is another way to move through the world, one that begins with reclaiming your role as a producer. Not in the economic sense, but in the original one: a person who brings something into being. This isn’t about content. It’s about presence. About living as someone who shapes, tends, and makes meaning in relationships, in routines, in the choices that don’t fit neatly into the marketplace.

You feel it when you travel slowly, without an agenda to check off. When you photograph something not for likes or sales, but because the light and silence of a moment deserve to be witnessed. You feel it when you cook a meal from what’s already in the cupboard, or when you write something that nobody asked for, except some deeper part of you that needed it said.

To live this way is not about rejecting all consumption. It’s about refusing to be defined by it. It’s about shifting your sense of value from accumulation to creation, from efficiency to attention. The goal is not to extract more from the world, but to engage more deeply with it.

The system will not reward this shift. It may not even notice. But that’s part of the power. Because when you no longer need to be seen as a customer, you are suddenly free to stop performing and start participating. You are no longer the target. You are the source.

And that changes everything.

So I’ll ask you this, gently: What would your life look like if it wasn’t organized around being useful to someone else’s profit?

Thank you for reading. If you would like to explore more in-depth content, I invite you to check out my book, "Wander Light: Notes on Carrying Less and Seeing More." It helps support this web page and enables me to continue providing you with more content. Get your copy here.