Some mornings, the question surfaces before I’m even out of bed. What am I supposed to do with my life? It loops through my mind like a low hum, growing louder with every breath. There is a restlessness to it. An urgency that wraps itself around my thoughts before I’ve even had my morning coffee.
I’m ashamed to admit just how much space it takes up in my head. From the outside, my life looks exactly how I hoped it would. But inside, there’s a quiet panic I can’t quite explain. I have people who love me deeply, a job I enjoy, and a creative outlet that lights me up. And yet, underneath it all, I can’t shake the feeling that I’m falling short of some invisible benchmark.
One of the most enduring cultural myths is that we should all be striving for greatness, even if that greatness costs us peace. It’s a myth I took as fact early in life. A seed disguised as truth, planted quietly and left to grow. Over time, it grew roots so deep I stopped knowing where it ended and I began.
When you grow up believing you’re not enough, greatness starts to look like salvation. My quest to become my best, most fulfilled self has rarely come from love or curiosity. More often, it’s been fuelled by comparison, perfectionism, and the belief that I have to be extraordinary to justify my place in the world.
Even as I write this, I question my own audacity. It sounds self-indulgent, right? Who am I to think I could be such a thing? When I say I want to be extraordinary, I really mean that I want to believe I’m becoming someone who can turn all of this—the heartbreak, agony, and passion—into something meaningful. Someone who can reach into the chaos and pull out a thread of truth. But I’m terrified that I never will. I fear that, despite my best efforts, I’ll fall short. That my ideas won’t land. That my voice won’t be heard. That all the inner complexity will remain just that—unseen, unshared. That I’ll be the person who almost did something meaningful but never quite got there.
That’s where my frustration lies. I can feel my future self inside me—the one who speaks with quiet conviction, who moves through the day without second-guessing every choice. I know she’s there. But I’m not fully her yet. I often feel an overwhelming pressure to package who I am becoming. I want to find the right words and the perfect pitch to articulate the value I bring. The irony is, if someone told me they were trying to condense the complexity of who they are into a neat value proposition, I’d gently remind them how impossible that is.
The risk of chasing greatness is that we might never find meaning because we’re always looking for it outside of ourselves. I’ve spent years obsessing over what I’m supposed to do with my life as if the correct answer would unlock peace. That question has haunted me in job interviews, journal entries, and late-night spirals. I treated it like a code to crack. A test I was falling behind on.
We’re meaning-making creatures by nature. We want to believe our stories matter. That our lives weren’t an accident. That all of this is leading somewhere. Our drive for meaning is as essential as our need for food or shelter. It gives shape to our identity, our values, and our ability to endure life’s ups and downs. But meaning isn’t something we plan. It doesn’t always arrive fully formed or on schedule. For some of us, it can feel like wandering. Like being perpetually on the verge of something you can’t yet name.
What if the striving itself was never the goal? While I’ve been busy trying to define what I should do, I never stopped to ask how I actually want to live. That question feels different. It doesn’t require a five-year plan or a perfect pitch. It asks me to pay attention to what I care about, what drains me, and what feels like home. It doesn’t offer immediate clarity. But it does help me find something steadier. A way to live that already feels meaningful because it is honest, intentional, and mine.
In many ways, I think my desire to be exceptional—the striving, urgency, and constant need to do more—has been a wall I built to protect myself from what I truly long for: to be seen, known and understood. It’s been a fortress I built brick by brick, mistaking effort for safety, when all I ever wanted was to be seen through the cracks.
Stopping to ask how I want to live, instead of what I want to do, is forcing me to pay attention to what I’ve already built. It’s helping me recognise that meaning doesn’t only exist in some extraordinary future. It exists here too, in the ordinary and the unfinished.
Striving for greatness is so deeply woven into how I see the world that I’m not sure I’ll ever fully separate myself from it. But that’s okay. What I’m slowly learning to want is not certainty or perfection but the belief that things will fall into place. That the messiness, the not-quite-there-yet, the shifting identities and unanswered questions are not detours. They are the point.
Thank you for reading. It truly means the world to me! 💌
It's funny, because I'll spend days spinning over big existential questions like this, thinking I must be the only one, only to hop onto Substack and immediately find a beautifully worded essay by someone struggling with the exact same thing. It's a nice reminder that we're never truly alone :)
I really appreciate your perspective on this. The pressure to constantly optimize ourselves and present a polished, marketable version of who we are can be exhausting and ultimately dehumanizing. It is easy to fall into the trap of thinking our worth is tied to how well we can articulate our value to others, whether in a job interview, on social media, or even in our personal relationships.
But as you point out, life is not a pitch deck and we are not products to be branded. The most meaningful parts of who we are like our quirks, our struggles, our unfinished stories, cannot be neatly summarized or sold. In fact, it is often in the messiness and vulnerability that we find real connection and purpose.
Embracing the ordinary and the imperfect is a radical act in a culture obsessed with achievement and image. It allows us to show up as our full selves, not just as a curated highlight reel. Maybe as you suggest, that is where true meaning lives not in being extraordinary but in being real.
Your vulnerability is powerful because it invites readers to reflect on their own experiences and recognize these same patterns in themselves. By sharing your inner world so candidly, you create a space where others can feel seen and understood. That is a rare and meaningful gift. Thank you for that.