Choices Create illusion, Not Liberation.
“We search for purpose. The universe offers silence.” -The Myth of Sisyphus
Every goal you achieve,
Every milestone you hit, every desire that once burned within you — when finally attained, somehow loses its power.
Choice is not about “right or wrong”
— it’s about choosing to live with full consciousness, despite the absurd.
It fades. The shine dulls. And you’re left wondering: Was that it?
Looking into my personal life,
I cannot say I’ve been a nihilist.
I didn’t suffer from clinical anhedonia.
But i’ve always hovered somewhere in between not quite empty, never quite full.
It’s the summer of ‘25.
I just completed my final exams, cleared all my backlogs — goals I set a year ago,
most of which I’ve now accomplished.
But looking back…
I wonder did I really believe these things would make me feel something?
Would they make me love myself or increase my self respect?
Today, as I walked out of that exam room with every logical reason to feel relief or triumph, there wasn’t even a sigh. Just… emptiness
i wonder: were the milestones too small?
Or am I forever chasing something bigger — always stretching toward a horizon that keeps moving? Maybe it’s just
Daniel Kahneman & Amos Tversky’s Prospect Theory in motion~
“People fear loss
more than they value gain.”
Maybe the moment something is achieved, the gain is already devalued in our MIND. We discount it. We move on.
We search for the next high.
Even during my early teens, I had glimpses of this strange awareness that chasing something with the hope it will change how you feel inside is the most elaborate illusion of all. And it’s strange — i’ve gotten almost everything i’ve ever wanted. And yet, i’ve never been able to fully hold it. Just teaching me the absurdity of it all.
Maybe it’s just
“The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”
— Albert Camus
The Paradox of Progress
Every time humanity advances — every time we create technology, more freedom, new access — we multiply our choices.
But with more choices comes more anxiety. More comparison. More regret.
We think we want freedom. But we forget:
With every option we say “yes” to, we silently bury the rest
Real freedom doesn’t lie in having endless options. It lies in knowing what you want, choosing it with awareness, and not needing anything else.
Because contentment is not in having everything
it is in choosing one thing — and letting go of everything else.
Existentialism is a Humanism — Jean-Paul Sartre
“Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself.”
We are free and that terrifying freedom means every choice we make defines us.
That is both the burden and the beauty.
We are condemned to be free.
There is no better feeling than chasing a goal you know is authentically your own.
Not to prove something. Not to please someone. But because maybe it moves something inside you.
The destination will never fulfill you.
The journey is the only place you ever really live. Trust your ‘maktub’.