This article presents an abridged version of ‘Is this OK?’, a story about an individual’s day in a non-specific future. The story was written as a teaching aid to help higher education students explore the impact of theory when refracted through an extreme. The paper begins by discussing the context surrounding the writing of the story, explaining the anecdotal observations that prompted the piece, the key theories that informed the authors when writing and the process of completing the original publication. Following the context, an abridged version of the story is presented, and the key themes brought forward in the abridged version are discussed. The paper finishes with an endnote on metaphors and the terminology of ‘natural capital’ and by extension ‘natural capitalism’.