Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Am I a burden on those around me? Yes? Well maybe that's okay, because being a "burden" doesn't have to be inherently bad. Then all you have to do as a reader is personally define "burden" as "burden-that's-not-inherently-bad-which-is-okay" and therefore you mentally answer "no I'm not a burden" and the plea from the essay no longer applies. Also, I don't assume the passion-chaser coerced the parent to pay unfairly.…
Oh! So there's a bunch of context and nuance to the question? And a bunch of other questions that need to be asked about like what is bad and what is good (and what is okay), or why is it bad, or how long will it be bad? Because none of those things are discussed in the article. That pretty much undermines most of the "value" of the article, it skips all those steps in the discussion and tries to sum it up under a si…
Yes! That specific context is in _your_ (the reader's) head!
>Because none of those things are discussed in the article.
It doesn't have to. You know more about your situation than the article.
>if you need a job, or if you _need_ to pay bills, or if you want to be _self-reliant_, getting a job is a good way to _fix_ or do those things?
And anyone can do the same to your sentence that you criticize the article for. What does "need" actually mean? What does "self-reliant" actually mean? What does "fix" actually mean? Every word in every article dissected. Ad infinitum.
(No, that doesn't mean I want you to you to add "context and nuance" to all those words. Same for the article about "burden." It would be tedious.)
To me, your special exemptions for burden look compatible with the article. To you they don't. Seems to be a matter of about the lens of language rather than a philosophical contradiction. I don't think the article depends on 7 billion people to universally agree on what "burden" means. Very few writings outside of mathematical proofs can meet that standard of agreement.