It’s an idea which comes to me less as an idea and more as a memory. Not something discovered, but something quietly recalled, as if it had always been there, waiting beneath the noise.

          For me, the sense that there is nothing to strive for, nothing to become, is one of those ideas. It has been present for as long as I can remember, but it never stood alone. It was wrapped in layers of cultural demand, the pressure to be something, to have a story ready for the world. “What do you do?” is never a neutral question. It is an act of classification. It is the reflex by which the world decides what you are worth.

          I always recoiled from it. The question itself felt wrong. Misaligned with something more fundamental.

          There has never been a moment in my life where I believed that what I did defined me. Even when I attempted to care, there was an internal shrug. A quiet dismissal. The sense that none of this information, job titles, ambitions, accomplishments, reached the innermost part of me.

          And when my life became more complicated, more fragile, more heavy with the difficult things, the illusion of such a possibility thinned even further.

          The noise didn’t quiet down. It became louder, more frantic, more absurd. But in its loudness I could finally see it for what it was. Just noise.

          What remained beneath it was something closer to stillness. Not a peaceful stillness, not a meditative one. More like the quiet gravity of something that doesn’t need your permission to exist. Something prior to identity, prior to goals, prior even to the self’s constant narrative-making.

          People tend to imagine that if they step back from striving, even briefly, they will see who they “truly” are. They hope for a rediscovery, a more authentic version of themselves waiting underneath the stress. A few weeks off, a retreat, a notebook, some time to breathe.

          But I don’t believe in that at all.

          I don’t think there is a “truer” self hidden underneath the striving. I don’t think there is a version of you waiting to be excavated. And I don’t believe that stepping back is a temporary practice meant to reset you for another round of purposeful living.

          If you step back, you should do it forever.

          Not in some dramatic way. Not in protest. Simply because there is nothing to step into. There is nothing behind the veil. No hidden destiny. No inner purpose waiting to bloom. If something emerges, it emerges without your permission. If nothing emerges, that is also fine.

          The world will tell you that meaning is something you build. That purpose is a kind of project. That dignity comes from your contribution. That your story is a construction, a thing you craft intentionally or otherwise. I think this is all an error. A well-established, culturally reinforced error, but an error nonetheless.

          Meaning isn’t made.
          Purpose isn’t chosen.
          Identity isn’t constructed.

          Something within us moves quietly, almost automatically. A trajectory forms, not consciously, not through ambition, not through the exhausting labour of becoming somebody. It is closer to what Advaita Vedanta gestures toward when it speaks of the divine as the innermost. Not in the metaphysical sense of a God who has plans for you, but in the simple recognition that whatever you are is deeper than the one who thinks he is living your life.

          There is a movement at the center.
          A directionality.
          An orientation that is not chosen.

          It’s like an innate trajectory. It’s neither mystical nor psychological. It is simply the felt truth that my life unfolds with a coherence I do not have to engineer. I make choices, of course I do. I calculate, anticipate, plan. But none of it feels like striving. None of it feels like an attempt to become anything. It is the natural behaviour of a life already flowing, already carrying me.

          And it carries my family too, my wife, my daughters, not because I believe in fate, but because their presence in my life is a given. A fact, not a role.

          People assume that success requires intention. That good outcomes are rewards for effort. But to me, success feels like another given. Not guaranteed, just obvious. Something that unfolds simply because the trajectory is already there. It’s not entitlement. It’s not optimism in the sentimental sense. It’s the recognition that life has a momentum that does not originate in the ego, and certainly does not respond to its attempts to control things.

          I’ve developed a growing sense that I don’t experience myself through what I do. The “what do you do?” question rarely seems to reach very far into me. And when I see how much weight others place on it, I sometimes feel the quiet sadness one feels watching someone chase a reflection on water.

          I don’t want my daughters to grow up trapped in that scaffolding. I don’t want them to imagine that meaning is tethered to employment, or that who they are can be captured in a sentence at a dinner party. If anything, I want them to be free of that project entirely. To live from the innermost, whatever that looks like. And I don’t care if it takes them a lifetime and leads nowhere measurable.

          Even if one day the world becomes so engineered that entire realities can be constructed around us, tuned to our desires, calibrated to our needs, even then this same truth will remain untouched. You can optimize experience, simulate purpose, and manufacture meaning endlessly, yet none of it will reach the place from which a life actually moves. That place is prior to all of it.

          So when I say “don’t try,” I mean it literally.
          Do not try to become anything.
          Do not try to build a legacy.
          Do not try to craft a self.
          Do not try to live with purpose.
          Do not try to make meaning.
          Do not try to impress the culture that has indoctrinated you into believing these things matter.

          Step back, and stay back.

          Let the noise scream itself hoarse. Let the world continue its frantic measuring, its comparisons, its incessant demands for identity. Let the pressure to strive roll past you. You are under no obligation to participate.

          And if something arises from within, a movement, an interest, a longing, a curiosity, then follow it. Not because it will lead to a better life, but because it is the only place from which a life can be lived at all.

          If nothing arises, then nothing arises.

          You are not failing.
          You are not behind.
          You are not missing out.
          You are simply refusing to perform the false self the culture expects of you.

          I think I have probably lived like this for some time, but only recently begun to grasp it. The self you are trying to improve, achieve, enhance, justify, or redeem does not exist in the way you think it does. When the striving quiets, there is nothing left to become, and what remains is enough.