The Script.

You were given The Script. Grow up in a family with mum and dad and a dog and some siblings, make friends and enjoy your childhood. Go to church. Trust in God. Get good grades at school. Get a high score at high school to get into a good university. Pick an area of study you enjoy and study hard to get a degree. Go into the workforce. Earn lots of money. Find someone to get married. Have kids and buy a house. Watch the kids grow up. Climb the corporate ladder. Send the kids off to school. Watch them graduate and get married. Retire.

But something felt off. Something was not sitting right.

Nobody asks you if you're ok with any of it.

Nobody taught you how to manage your money.
Nobody taught you how to fall in love.
Nobody taught you about the real power - and danger - of sex and eros.
Nobody taught you about the people you would encounter beyond good and evil.
Nobody taught you about empathy - yours, and theirs.
Nobody taught you about narcissism, or your own selfishness.
Nobody told you it was ok to be selfish.
Nobody told you that you don't need to believe in a religion.
Nobody told you the world is not fair.

The Script was handed to you regardless of your gender. Men were told to follow it without question. Women were handed an alternative - but an alternative that is still a script - a different set of rules, enforced by a different set of voices.

And still nobody told you - you had a choice.

The Script is coherent. It works - until it doesn't. Most people follow it without questioning it because it produces enough reward to keep them inside it. The nuclear family. The tribes you belong in with chosen family. The job with a high salary so you can get your fancy condo and job title.

The modern world didn't just hand you The Script - it built an entire infrastructure to keep you inside it.

TikTok. Instagram. LinkedIn. An endless scroll of people performing their version of The Script better than you. Your colleague's promotion announced with a polished post. Your ex's relationship documented in carefully curated photographs. Your friend's body sculpted and displayed for strangers to validate with a double tap.

The dopamine hit is instant - the feedback loop is constant, and the architecture is deliberate - designed to keep you comparing, consuming, performing. Belonging measured in followers. Worth measured in engagement. Identity assembled from content.

And the algorithm rewards you for it.

Then the cracks appear. Not dramatically at first, just, the promotion doesn't feel like it was supposed to. That last post didn't give you the dopamine hit you wanted. The relationship requires more self-erasure than expected. The power you obtained drained your self more than you realised. The framework you built your identity around starts showing gaps.

And then, one day, you wake up and you don't even know who you are, or why you are unhappy - and you realise, you never did.

This is when reality contradicts The Script you were handed. It usually doesn't come from one event necessarily - sometimes it's an accumulation. Work. Relationships. Self-image - all cracking simultaneously. And like all advice given in modern day society - you go to therapy. Self-help.

You feel soothed. A new story is installed - a new narrative to find comfort in the harshness of reality that you never knew.

But something doesn't sit right.

Something feels missing. And things are still happening around you - relationships, family, friends, lovers, work, capitalism, consumerism, war, famine, violence...

And it feels completely out of control.