You wake up one day and there you are. The house, the job, the life you built. Or did it build you? The Talking Heads asked this question decades ago and I still can’t shake it: “How did I get here?”
It sounds simple. But it’s the kind of question that unravels everything if you sit with it long enough. Because most of the time I’m not choosing my life so much as I’m drifting through it, caught in routines and expectations. Like water flowing under the bridge, time carries you forward without asking permission.
“Same as it ever was.” People might hear resignation in that line. I hear a challenge.
Because life only repeats itself if I let it. And I’ve let it more than I’d like to admit. There’s a comfort in repetition that feels like stability but is really just autopilot. I wake up, do the thing, go to sleep, do it again. Weeks blur into months. Months into years. Same as it ever was.
The question I keep coming back to is simple and uncomfortable: am I living deliberately, or am I just along for the ride? Most days I’m not sure I like the answer.