During my senior year of high school, I spent little time worrying about the future. My top priorities were graduating and not losing my girlfriend. By eighth grade, my Catholic parents and Nana had already given up on the idea that I would one day become a priest. Sports and girls took its place.
If I had followed that path, much of my life would have been structured in advance. I would still have faced the question of how to live, but it would have unfolded within a shared framework rather than one I had to construct alone.
Some people say they knew from a young age what they wanted to do and simply followed it. Maybe they are fortunate in that way. For many of us, though, there is no clear path. We are left to piece things together ourselves, deciding what matters without a common map. That was certainly true for me.
For much of history, that burden was carried differently. Religious traditions offered shared beliefs and practices that oriented a person’s life. They did not remove uncertainty, but they gave it a shape and a place. This was my experience while living for decades inside a tradition that helped me better understand the meaning of my life and my place in the world.
Today, that shared framework has largely given way to something else: a world where the individual is responsible for determining meaning, truth, and purpose. You can hear it in the language we use. We are told to find our purpose, do what we love, and build a life that feels authentic. The assumption beneath it all is that the answer must come from within. I first noticed this back in the early 1970s, with the sudden surge in popularity of self-help books, seminars, and workshops that emphasized self-discovery and personal growth.
What are we already living inside of?
We move through daily life under these assumptions so naturally that they rarely come into view. They shape how we think, choose, and judge what matters, often without our noticing. I rarely questioned it.
Even our deepest questions—why am I here, what is the purpose of life—are asked from within this same self-referential frame. I remember sitting in a field overlooking a valley, asking myself what my life meant, and realizing that no shared answer was waiting for me. Whatever answer I arrived at would have to be my own.
What are we already living inside of?
People respond to this in different ways. Some turn toward religious communities, where belief and practice offer a way to receive answers rather than construct them alone. I can see the appeal in that, especially in contrast to the endless stream of systems, programs, and advice all promising clarity or transformation.
Others take a different route, identifying as spiritual but not religious. They tend to distrust large institutions, especially religious ones, and place authority within personal experience. I have felt that pull as well, the desire for meaning without submission to something that feels imposed from the outside.
Still others approach these questions without reference to any higher authority, or remain uncertain about whether such answers can be known at all. And many people, occupied with work and relationships, rarely dwell on these questions in explicit terms. Even when I was fully immersed in pursuing a spiritual path, I often found little time outside of working and raising a family to focus on such concerns.
But across all these differences, the underlying situation remains the same: we are expected to determine for ourselves what is true, what matters, and how to live.
Before trying to answer those questions, it may be worth seeing that situation more clearly and recognizing how much it already shapes our answers.