What We Survive, We Tend to Normalize

School fires. Public demonstrations. A growing sense of unrest that is often described in different ways depending on who is speaking.

To some, these are signs of discipline breaking down. To others, they are signs of frustration finally finding a voice. To others still, they are simply chaos—things that should not be happening at all.

But very little of the conversation seems to pause on a quieter question: what if these are not separate incidents at all?

What if they are different expressions of the same underlying tension—one that we rarely name directly?

Because there is an assumption that sits beneath much of how we interpret society:

That what we survived is what should be survived. And what we endured is what should be endured.

People often treat their own endurance of hardship as proof that hardship is normal, necessary, or fair. Once that shift happens, survival stops being just experience and becomes instruction: a silent template for how life should be lived.

And in Kenya, this shows up in very familiar ways.

A common phrase in workplaces is: “We started on KES 15,000 and survived.” It is said with pride, sometimes even with humour. But embedded in it is a quiet expectation—that survival is the benchmark, not the exception.

What is missing from that statement is the question of whether survival should have been the starting point at all.

This becomes visible in the way we talk about work.

For many people, the early years of their careers were defined by low pay, long hours, difficult bosses, and limited opportunities. They took what they could get because there were few alternatives.

Those experiences do not remain in the past. They become benchmarks, reference points, proof that success requires sacrifice.

So when someone questions those conditions—or refuses them altogether—the reaction is often immediate.

They do not want to work.
They are entitled.
They want shortcuts.

But beneath those judgments lies a deeper assumption:

If hardship was part of my journey, then hardship must be part of the journey.

The same logic appears in education.

Many people who attended boarding schools remember them as places of strict rules, limited freedom, and shared discomfort. At the time, many counted the days until they could leave.

Yet years later, those same experiences are often reframed as character-building. We are told they built resilience, discipline, and mental toughness.

Perhaps they did.

But something else also happens.

What was once endured becomes what is later expected.

The hardship is no longer one possible path. It becomes the path.

And so when others question whether some of those conditions were necessary in the first place, the reaction is often defensive—not because people love suffering, but because they have woven that suffering into the story they tell themselves about who they became.

The same pattern quietly shapes relationships.

Many people stayed in relationships, marriages, jobs, and social arrangements not because they were fulfilling, but because leaving carried a cost they were unwilling or unable to pay.

Over time, endurance becomes associated with commitment. Sacrifice becomes associated with maturity.

So when someone walks away from a draining situation, there is often a reaction that goes beyond disagreement.

Why should they leave when others stayed?

This is where the conversation becomes uncomfortable.

What looks like a disagreement about values is often a disagreement about acceptable suffering.

One person looks at a condition and says:

“This is difficult, but isn’t that just life?”

Another looks at the same condition and asks:

“But does it have to be?”

And that difference quietly shapes how societies move.

There is a recurring complaint that younger people do not stay in jobs long enough. That they are unwilling to “pay their dues.” That they expect too much too soon.

Perhaps sometimes that is true.

But another possibility exists.

Perhaps what is being witnessed is not a rejection of work itself, but a rejection of inherited thresholds of suffering.

A refusal to accept conditions simply because they were once accepted.

The same tension appears in public unrest and institutional breakdowns.

The focus is often on the visible event—the protest, the disruption, the breaking point.

But underneath lies the question:

What happens when people stop accepting conditions that others have come to see as normal?

What happens when inherited definitions of endurance begin to break down?

What we survive, we tend to normalize. And what we normalize, we tend to expect others to survive.

That is how hardship becomes culture.

Not through instruction. But through repetition.

Over time, societies develop invisible thresholds:

How much discomfort is acceptable.
How much struggle is normal.
How much pressure is simply part of life.

These thresholds rarely get questioned—until someone refuses to meet them.

And that refusal is often what is being reacted to.

Not necessarily laziness. Not necessarily entitlement. But disruption.

Because refusal forces an uncomfortable question into the open:

Were these hardships truly necessary—or were they simply common?

Perhaps that is why these conversations feel so emotionally charged.

They are not only about the present.

They are also about meaning.

If what I endured is no longer required, what does that say about what I went through?

This does not mean all hardship is meaningless.

Nor does it mean all systems should be dismantled.

Some forms of difficulty build resilience. Some sacrifices are necessary.

But the challenge is learning the difference between what is necessary and what has merely become familiar.

A society that mistakes familiarity for necessity will keep passing down hardship long after its purpose has expired.

And a society that cannot question its inherited definitions of suffering will struggle to imagine alternatives.

So perhaps the question is not why people disagree about work, school, relationships, or change.

Perhaps the question is this:

What happens when a society builds its definition of normal life from past hardship rather than present possibility?

Because if endurance becomes the foundation of expectation, then change will always feel excessive—even when it is simply correction.