I was scrolling through Instagram recently and came across a short video clip that stopped me cold. It showed a robotic arm inside a glass box, spinning and wiping up a dark red liquid. It was mesmerizing, confusing — and somehow emotional. So I dove into Google to find out all about it.
In 2016, inside the Guggenheim Museum in New York City, a robotic arm took the stage. But this was no ordinary machine. It wasn’t building cars or sorting packages — it was performing. The piece was called Can’t Help Myself, created by Chinese artists Sun Yuan and Peng Yu. And it seemed to captivate everyone who walked by.
The robot was trapped inside a glass box. Around it, a thick, blood-red hydraulic fluid slowly leaked and pooled. The robot's sole task? Keep the fluid within a certain boundary. Armed with a wide flat tool at its tip, the machine constantly spun, scooped, wiped, and dragged the fluid back toward the center.
It was programmed with dozens of movements — some purely functional, others resembling little flourishes, like a spin or a pause to wipe its brow, so to speak. In fact, it was designed to dance — and in the beginning, it did. Frequently. Almost defiantly. The fluid didn’t seem like much of a threat early on; the robot could clean it up with ease and get right back to showing off. People watched, entertained by its confidence and rhythm. But the longer it danced with that ever-present leak beneath it — like carrying a bucket with a hole in the bottom — the more obvious it became that it would never catch up.
The machine was slowly wearing itself down. The fluid kept leaking. The effort grew more desperate. The movements more sluggish. The performance, once charming, started to feel tragic. Some viewers cried.
It couldn’t stop. It couldn’t escape. And it couldn’t win. It was programmed to try to contain the uncontainable.
Why tell you this?
Because we are not so different from that robot.
We tell ourselves we’re fine. That everything is under control. That we can keep dancing. That if we just keep moving, things will work themselves out. But what if we’re wrong?
What if, without realizing it, we are slowly being drained?
What if the capital we’re meant to use in retirement is quietly leaking away — through overspending, through inflation, through the illusion of safety that comes from “just moving to cash until things settle down”? What if the decisions we’re making today, or not making, are setting us up for a slow decline?
You can’t always see erosion. That’s what makes it so dangerous. It doesn’t announce itself. It whispers. It wears things down in the background. Until one day, you wake up and the robot can’t dance anymore.
We all want the future to be comfortable, free, secure. But here’s the question:
Because without sacrifice, there is no freedom.
And yet we live in a world that promises the opposite. That if we just earn enough, or invest in the right thing, or follow the next trend, we’ll be fine. We don’t have to change anything. We don’t have to give anything up.
But that’s a lie. And deep down, we know it.
There’s a strange moment when you realize that Shaquille O’Neal — NBA legend, four-time champion, one of the most dominant athletes in the history of the game — is doing commercials for Icy Hot and Home Depot.
Why?
This is a man who earned roughly $292 million in salary over his career, not counting his lucrative endorsement deals and investments. He could disappear from the public eye forever. And yet, there he is. Smiling in a warehouse. Selling discount tools and pain relief patches.
Maybe he just loves working. Maybe he loves helping people. Or maybe he knows something we don’t.
Maybe he understands that the show must go on — and that financial erosion doesn’t care how famous you are. Maybe, after years of excess in the NBA, he looked around and saw hundreds of former players who had gone bankrupt. Maybe that scared him — scared him early enough that he still had the time, and the resources, to make a different set of choices and turn things around.
So let me ask:
Because no, it’s not fun to defer gratification. It’s not glamorous to contribute to retirement when you could book another trip, buy the new car, or upgrade the kitchen. It’s not exciting to stay invested when the market is scary.
But neither is being 75 years old and realizing you have to keep working.
Neither is looking back and seeing a life where you danced beautifully — but never got free.
Because what happens if we dance too much early on and don’t respect the future? What if we make excuses, delay the hard choices, and let ourselves believe that we’ll figure it out later? That kind of thinking comes with a cost. Do we work until we’re 80? Do we depend entirely on Social Security and Medicare? Do we become a financial burden to the very children we hoped to protect? Is that the kind of retirement — the kind of life — that reflects dignity?
The truth is, you can’t outsource discipline. You can’t skip sacrifice and still expect freedom. The longer you delay, the smaller the window becomes. And eventually, the math wins.
The truth is this: Retirement is not an age. It’s a mathematical condition.
It happens when your capital can support your lifestyle. And every decision you make today affects that equation.
You either control your capital, or your capital controls you. And if you’re not paying attention, you may end up like the robot — working harder and harder, with less and less effect, trapped in a box of your own making.
So…
These are not easy questions. But they are the right ones.
And if you don’t ask them now, time will answer them for you.
With less grace.
With fewer options.
With more urgency.
So ask them now.
And keep asking.
Because even the robot had a choice — in the beginning.
And so do you.