The Alternate Reality

An excerpt from While We Still Have Time, forthcoming 2026.

Allow me to paint an alternate reality.

***

I walk the path of conformity, securing a mundane job and adhering to a timeline dictated by society’s wishes. I tread in respectable mediocrity before making any decisions, postponing life under the illusion of endless time. I put on a mask of happiness, sacrificing my true self for the empty approval of those around me. I am perpetually out of place, misunderstood, and perhaps even at odds with my own essence. I am a social tool, fitting neatly into precise compartments that offer a false sense of security. I outsource my beauty, my worth, my happiness, letting others reflect it back to me so I don’t have to feel it directly.

I look down on freedom, and those who cannot follow my predictable path, their freedom a threat to my fragile sense of superiority. In this pursuit, I believe in my superiority, a puppet master in a world of my own making, where the only truth is the facade I present. I document my life obsessively, not what I am seeing but myself seeing it. I am already imagining the image while the moment is still unfolding. I stand somewhere beautiful thinking about how I look standing there. Being seen replaces being. No one questions this anymore. We call it sharing. We call it memory. When all it is is proof-gathering for a life that isn’t being lived.

In this alternate reality, I am applauded for my restraint. People call me grounded, realistic, mature, because I have learned how to silence the part of me that wanted too much. I confuse numbness with peace. I mistake predictability for safety. I congratulate myself for surviving a life I was never meant to inhabit.

I only walk to my car. I sit inside a sealed machine that protects me while exposing everyone else, a private capsule of speed and force where my attention carries consequences beyond my own body. I growl at traffic as if it weren’t made almost entirely of people exactly like me. I demand speed while contributing weight. Every street becomes a test I barely notice: children, cyclists, elderly bodies calibrated against my impatience. A kill machine, normalised, regulated, insured, handed over daily as responsibility disguised as convenience. I burn fuel to spare myself the effort of distance, traveling on roads designed to fail gradually, absorbing destruction into routine. Roads disappear beneath my feet so I can arrive sooner, untouchable.

I scroll through other people’s lives to reassure myself that no one is truly free. I consume inspiration in controlled doses, careful never to let it infect me with action. I say one day so often it becomes a lullaby that puts my courage to sleep. My dopamine levels fluctuate like the waves I can’t ride. From morning till evening I can’t eat without my phone glowing beside my plate. I promise myself I’ll quit, detoxify, limit, delete and dismiss every method that would actually inconvenience me. I believe I have discipline but I simply decide I won’t do it just yet. The phone keeps me stimulated enough to feel content and distracted enough to avoid feeling trapped.

I become fluent at making excuses. Time, money, stability and responsibility. I tell myself I’m choosing this life but the truth is I’m avoiding the fear of choosing anything at all. I grow intolerant of depth. When conversations drift toward meaning, death, or desire, I redirect them to logistics. I cannot afford to look too closely. Awareness would demand movement, and movement would expose the lie. So I stay busy. Productivity numbs the pain I won’t even name.

I develop a quiet resentment toward anyone who lives loudly. Artists embarrass me. Lovers who risk everything irritate me. People who leave unsettle me. Their existence implies that I could have done otherwise, and that is an implication I cannot survive intact. So I mock and pity them, reducing them to cautionary tales, anything to keep my own reflection from cracking.

I go on retreats where enlightenment is sold to me for three thousand pounds guided by Greg from California, while locals work invisibly to keep the experience seamless. Nothing signals awakening like money well spent. I outsource the slow, humiliating work of introspection to a schedule, a package, a payment plan. I leave lighter, cleaner, convinced I’ve arrived, then return unchanged, reassured that depth remains a product I can access whenever I’m ready to pay.

I tell myself I care about the planet as I inhabit cities that import everything we consume. I want to see untapped places and tap them, while calling it curiosity and exploration, while deep down I know it would be too raw for me. I want to numb myself on holidays where all I do is lie still, recovering from the exhaustion of a life I call successful. I am a hypocrite flying across the world, the single largest personal carbon load most people ever create and I know it. I offset, I rationalize, as the fuel is burning beneath me. I live in a city plugged into extreme resource use, sustained by imported food, constant climate control, endless infrastructure, and I sip a matcha oat latte while knowing better. I buy sustainable things to consume without guilt: new yoga mats, new bottles, new clothes wrapped in eco-language. I know better, and continue anyway.

In this reality, I am dazzled by height and shine. Skyscrapers convince me of progress. Glass towers rising from sand feel like achievement, even when I know they are built on invisible hands, on imported bodies that will never look up from the ground they poured. I admire the bling while pretending not to see the cost: cities covered in luxury, faces frozen in Botox, abundance displayed like a weapon. I mistake excess for power, spectacle for substance. I tell myself it’s impressive, aspirational, the future, as I carefully avoid asking who paid for it, who disappeared into it, who will never belong to the skyline they built. I let myself be seduced by the glow because it saves me from asking harder questions about what kind of world I am applauding.

I tell myself I am above chaos, when in reality I am terrified of aliveness. I confuse control with dignity. I confuse order with meaning. I confuse comfort with fulfillment. And slowly, expertly, I become someone who is very good at living, and very bad at being alive. Years pass without leaving a mark. My body ages, but my inner world remains untouched, untested, unspent. I grow older without growing deeper. I accumulate objects, routines, acquaintances, but no stories that could save me if everything were stripped away. And one day it dawns on me that I have become invisible to myself. The dull, unbearable knowing that I did everything right, and I still betrayed my life.

Not that this life is painful, but that it is acceptable.

Parrot in a Sea of Penguins

Some people think a hundred thousand dollars is the hardest thing to earn. For others, they can just get a hundred thousand.

The concept of earning is small. You can lecture me about earning while I enjoy my life in the suburbs. Are you trying to prove a point? So what if I didn't earn it with hard work? I was born with it. You made it to Earth: did you earn that? Do you earn who you are or where you are? You have not earned anything, no matter what.

Because I earn money, I have earned the right to live? Absurdity. Our value and right to exist aren’t defined solely by our economic contribution but by our intrinsic worth as human beings and the unique qualities we bring to the world. Your worth is inherent in who you are: the kindness you show, the connections you build, the impact you make through your authenticity. Earn the things that matter to you. It's never next time, it's now.

Parrot in a sea of penguins.

You need to establish a person’s worldview to get to know someone. Some people believe to exist is to make money. And the same perspectives tend to hand out together because they perpetuate that worldview and won’t question it.

What does rich mean to you? What does making a living mean? What if I live on a farm and don’t even use money? Is that making a living?

The answer depends entirely on the worldview of the person you are speaking to.

Which is why you have to establish that first. You have to know what game they think they are playing, what winning looks like from where they stand, what they would say if you asked them quietly, without judgment, on an ordinary Tuesday: what does any of this mean to you?

Because some people will answer with a number.

And some people will pause.

And in that pause, in the space between the question and whatever comes next, that is where you find out who you are actually talking to.