A year later, Elias sat on a bench in a park he helped design. The bench was made of recycled plastic—tough, weather-resistant, and useful. He felt a strange kinship with the slats beneath him.
"None of it," the foreman yelled over the roar of the machinery. "If you try to use it as it is, yeah, it’s broken. But we break it down further. We melt it, strip the impurities, and turn it into something else. These bottles? Tomorrow they’re high-performance park benches or medical-grade tools. It’s the same material, just a better purpose." A year later, Elias sat on a bench
But by thirty-five, the structure was hollow. He had the title, the house, and the marble, but he felt like a ghost haunting his own halls. His "Lifetime Aspirations" had become a cage of his own making. "None of it," the foreman yelled over the