The Grocery Store Feeling: Why Ordinary Life Suddenly Feels More Expensive, More Fragile, and Weirdly Exhausting (opens in new tab)

Last week, a man in Plymouth stood silently in front of the meat case at Market Basket holding two packages of ground beef like Hamlet contemplating mortality beneath fluorescent lighting and a sale sign for frozen shrimp. Not angry exactly. Just tired in a very contemporary American way. The kind of tiredness that arrives when ordinary life begins requiring the emotional stamina of a regional airport during a thunderstorm. Everything still technically functions. The planes still leave. The l...