Are You Chasing a Mirage That Was Never Real?

I sank into my couch this Saturday, Bengali Tea (assam) gone cold, the gray November light bleeding through the blinds. My phone buzzed with another “success story” notification—someone I barely knew had just closed a seven-figure deal. Good for them, I thought. Then the familiar sting hit. Someone asked me at the backdrop of same thing, Why not me? That’s when the thought detonated like a silent firework: What if the finish line I’ve been sprinting toward his entire adult life is just a painted desert? I grabbed my notebook and started writing. What spilled out over the next three hours became this article. These are his confessions, his accusations, and—maybe— liberation.We’ve been sold a counterfeit dream. Not the modest version where hard work leads to comfort, but the glossy, high-definition edition where success equals a specific postcode, a specific watch, a specific number of zeros. Scroll for thirty seconds on any platform and the catalog appears: imported SUVs labeled “freedom,” Maldives sunsets labeled “proof,” $10,000 masterminds labeled “elite.” None of these things are evil in themselves. The evil is the sleight of hand that turned personal fulfillment into a shelf product. I bought it. I chased the car, the title, the applause. Each acquisition felt like stepping onto solid ground—until the ground dissolved into the next craving.The first lie is that success is external and purchasable. Strip away the ads, the influencers, the parental scripts, and ask: What remains? I tried the experiment in my life and still do. I muted every account that made me feel small, closed the comparison tabs, and sat with the silence. The void was terrifying. I had outsourced my definition of “enough” to strangers who profit from my hunger. Schopenhauer’s pendulum—pain to boredom and back—swings hardest when the chase itself becomes the purpose. The system doesn’t want you satisfied; it wants you almost satisfied, forever one upgrade away from peace.The second lie reduces human worth to a bank balance. I once believed that if I just hit the next income bracket, the existential static would quiet. I actually always set a goal for my salary and always achieved it with few exceptions. It didn’t. The noise simply recalibrated to the next bracket. Meanwhile, the nurse saving lives in the ER, the teacher staying late to tutor a struggling kid, the parent choosing presence over promotion—these lives register as rounding errors on the spreadsheet of “success.” We’ve internalized a metric that measures accumulation, not contribution. And because the game has no final whistle, every milestone morphs into a new starting line. Wealth, like seawater, only sharpens the thirst.The third lie is the cult of productivity. I used to wear exhaustion like a medal. Fourteen-hour days, weekends sacrificed to “side hustles,” sleep negotiated down to micro-doses. The mantra was seductive: Work while they sleep. Hustle harder. But hustle toward what? A life so optimized that contemplation becomes “wasted time”? I burned out spectacularly at thirty-five. My body forced a sabbatical the market never approved. In the quiet that followed, I realized productivity without purpose is just sanctioned self-harm. The system applauds output; it never asks whether the output matters to the person producing it.The fourth lie turns life into a performance. We don’t travel to experience; we travel to document. We don’t buy to use; we buy to signal. I caught myself staging “candid” photos—laughing at a café I didn’t enjoy, angling the laptop to catch the brand logo. The audience was imaginary yet tyrannical. Likes became dopamine invoices. The deeper betrayal: I started curating my inner monologue for an invisible jury. Authenticity atrophied. I became a sales personnel for a product—myself—that I no longer recognized in the mirror.The fifth lie is comparison as operating system. Every salary reveal, every engagement announcement, every “30 under 30” list is engineered to make 99% of us feel behind. The algorithm serves highlight reels on steroids, then sells the antidote—courses, coaches, crypto schemes. I deleted the apps for a week once and felt withdrawal shakes. The silence was unbearable because I had no internal compass. My benchmarks were borrowed, my joy comparative. Envy wasn’t a personal flaw; it was the intended user experience. Here’s where the rebellion begins. I’m done measuring my life against imported yardsticks. I’m building internal metrics—ruthlessly subjective, gloriously unphotographable. Did I act in alignment with my values today? Did I protect time for the people and projects that make my chest expand? Did I refuse the hustle when it demanded I betray myself? These questions don’t trend, but they anchor.Freedom isn’t free. Colleagues call it “checking out.” Family worries I’m “wasting potential.” The social cost is real, but so is the alternative: a lifetime auditioning for roles I never wanted. I’d rather be judged for my choices than mourn the life I postponed for applause.The marketplace will keep selling mirages—shiny, urgent, limited-edition. I’m learning to walk past the neon without apology. My success now looks like Tuesday mornings with no alarm, like saying no to lucrative gigs that shrink my soul, like measuring wealth in undisturbed hours and unforced laughter. It’s invisible to the algorithm, which makes it priceless. So I’ll end with the question that shattered my Saturday once and might shatter yours:

When every external voice goes silent, what does success look like to the version of you that no one is watching?