I’m not living a good life.
It looks good on the outside, but on the inside it feels foreign. It feels like I’m living someone else’s life, observing it from the outside. I’m on autopilot executing a never-ending to-do list, but completing a task brings me no satisfaction, only the feeling that I have done my duty.
Days turn into weeks, months, and years, and I feel like I have nothing to show for them. I feel joy fleeting as anxiety and restlessness become my daily companions. In the background, there is a low-frequency discomfort that doesn’t leave me alone, a feeling that something essential is missing.
I can feel internal resistance growing and pressure building. To make things worse, I feel wrong for feeling this way. By most standards, I’m fortunate. I should feel grateful. Yet here I am. I’m getting closer to a breaking point.
If my life was a movie, I would walk out of the theatre.
How did I get here?
I thought I did everything right.
I conformed and complied. I went to school, made friends, got a degree, travelled, acquired experiences, found a job, built a career, and started to accumulate wealth. Wasn’t this the script that was supposed to lead to a good life?
It worked for a while. I remember a time when life felt good and things still made sense. The script didn’t stop working overnight. The change was gradual.
Little by little, things that once gave my life meaning started to lose their impact. I reached many of my life goals, but they didn’t bring me the sense of fulfilment I had anticipated. My life started to feel misaligned. That is when I began to question the script. Where did it come from to begin with?
What is the script?
All humans want to live a good life. It might be the one thing we can all agree on. But what is a good life? Is it possible to define it in universal terms?
When humans lived in small tribes, a good life was something we strived for intuitively. As we began to live in larger societies, we needed more structure and shared rules. Over time, this became the script for how to live a good life.
We inherit the script from our families, schools, culture, stories, media, and the systems we grow up in. It tells us what to value, what to strive for, and what success looks like. The script gives us a shared direction, a borrowed purpose, and a sense of belonging.
And for a while, it works.
It makes the first half of life easier because you don’t have to design it from scratch. You follow the path, chase the next milestone, and keep your eyes on your feet instead of the horizon, believing it will eventually lead to a good life.
When the script stops working
When the script no longer works, it shows up as friction. At first, it’s subtle and easy to ignore. Over time, it grows until it becomes impossible to live with.
Friction feels like anxiety, restlessness, a sense that something is wrong even when everything is fine.
The first instinct is to run. To distract yourself. To stay busy. To work harder. To optimise your life. To change jobs, cities, or relationships. To chase the next thing that might offer a moment of relief.
But running only postpones the pain.
What if instead of running, we listened to what those feelings had to say? Could it be that they were trying to tell us something, that the life we’re living no longer fits?
Eventually, staying where you are becomes more painful than changing. You realise that you can no longer keep trying to fit in without abandoning yourself. Once you see this, you can’t unsee it. The script begins to crack everywhere you look.
Why the script fails us
The script doesn’t fail everyone. Some people can follow the same script for an entire lifetime and, by their own standards, live a good life.
Maybe the script works when you are still building the foundations of life: safety, stability, material security. Some people never leave this stage. The friction appears only after it has delivered what it promised.
The script fails because it is static. Human beings are not. As we change, develop, and transform, inherited scripts become rigid. What once felt right can begin to feel suffocating. A script that does not evolve stops working for those who do.
The script also fails because it offers borrowed meaning and purpose. Meaning and purpose that are inherited rather than lived are never truly our own. Over time they begin to feel hollow. To become who you truly are, you eventually have to stop following the path and create your own.
The script fails because it focuses on the external life. The external life is about things that can be measured, like status, income, and productivity. The inner life is about things that cannot be measured, like meaning, love, and wisdom. When the inner life is ignored, no amount of external success can make a life feel whole.
Finally, the script fails because it is incomplete. It was never meant to be the whole story. What happens after material success is achieved? How much is enough? Do we just go for more? Does the script simply end and keep us trapped in the same loop? The script can help us get started, but it doesn’t tell us how to reach the final destination.
Where do I go from here?
I understand now why the script stopped working. The life I was following no longer fits who I’m becoming.
I understand now that I’m on the wrong train. I know that I want to get off, but I don’t know how, or if there even is another train waiting.
I don’t have the answers yet. All I know is that something has ended, and something else has yet to begin.
I am in transit.
And something tells me that I’m not the only one.