Why Your Life Feels Fine but Doesn't Feel Like Yours

Part 1 of 2 of The Reason for the Work.

A friend asked how I've done the same work for twenty years without once getting bored. The honest answer is bigger than the question, and it's the reason for all of it.

Almost no one is living a life they actually chose. Before you had any say, it was decided for you: what a good life looks like, what you owe and who you owe it to, what love is, what you're even allowed to want. It doesn't feel like someone else's choices. It just feels like reality, the water you've been swimming in since before you could speak. And a fish never discovers the water.

That unsettled feeling underneath a life that's meant to feel fine was never a fault in you to fix. It's the part of you that never got a vote, and it's finally got loud enough to reach you. This is Part 1 of 2 on why that feeling is the most honest signal you've had in a long time, why the great work asks you to let the borrowed life dissolve before you build one that's yours, and why almost everyone runs from that first half.

Michael Lauria

The Architect