The Myth That You Live Your Life
On the train, I remembered The Myth of Mental Illness by Thomas Szasz. I've worked in mental hospitals—with children, teens, adults, the elderly—and Szasz was right about one crucial thing: we must question deeply what we take for granted. So I asked myself: What myth hides in plain sight?
They do not. I'm not speaking about alien abductions or the typical NPCs crossing streets, eyes glued to screens. I mean everyone—even those who believe they've seen everything.
Allow me to explain: You say you're living your life. But you pursue things you've never examined. You follow rhythms you've never questioned. You repeat patterns that didn't begin with you.
You think it’s you wanting sex. You believe it’s you choosing your partner. You imagine it’s you selecting your job, your voice, your timing. But look closer.
You are not the author. Default Life is.
Do not underestimate it. It wears your name. It mimics your voice. It justifies each self-betrayal with logic, guilt, or the notion that you had no choice.
We like to believe the world began with light, law, or divine words. But ancient myths tell another story:
In the Enuma Elish, the Mesopotamian cosmos emerges from the corpse of Tiamat, a chaos dragon. The world is not spoken—it’s carved from monstrous flesh.
Norse mythology describes gods creating the world from the bones of Ymir, a primordial giant whose body births life through sweat.
In Aztec legend, Cipactli—a ravenous sea-beast—is torn apart to form the earth. She never truly dies; she must constantly be fed.
Even Māori and Yoruba cosmologies show darkness, mud, confusion—not clarity—as the starting conditions. Impulse, not instruction, breathes first.
The world begins with appetite, raw impulse, creature-force, and chaotic fertility. Order arrives later—as a defense, a taming, a remembering.
Yet the beast still breathes.
This ancient force—this unnamed wanting—still pulses within you. It built your body, shaped your longings, and speaks before you think.
You must acknowledge it, and see clearly how and when it moves your life.
Every tradition recognized it, though few named it explicitly:
Buddhism calls it saṃsāra—endless craving and suffering, unconscious rebirth.
Hinduism sees Māyā—illusion, the false belief in roles, ambitions, attachments.
Gnosticism describes Archons—invisible rulers keeping souls asleep.
The Hebrew Bible, in Exodus, portrays Egypt as a land of oppression where the Israelites endured slavery, forced labor, and a rigid hierarchy—a structured life devoid of freedom, vitality, and hope.
Sufism names it Nafs—the egoic whisperer of habits and impulses.
The philosopher Schopenhauer called it Will—a blind striving force.
The psychologist Freud reduced it to Trieb—drives tamed by ego and society. Both sensed it, named fragments of it, yet missed its full scope.
Intellectual boot camp entrepreneur Werner Erhard went deeper:
“You’re not living your life. Life is living you.”
Erhard saw clearly—not fate, trauma, or libido—but the automatic machinery of human existence. Not brokenness or sin. Just the Default Program.
A dog worries about food. Similarly, beneath civilization’s thin veneer, our appetites consume us.
You don't have appetites. They have you.
Your concerns—“I want,” “I like,” “I don't want”—aren’t yours. They belong to it. They have you.
Your possessions—car, house, job, relationships, beliefs—they possess you.
You don’t think. It thinks. You have thoughts. You don’t feel. It feels. You have feelings. You don’t act. Mostly, you are acted through.
Erhard understood you can't escape—but you can witness. And in witnessing, a space opens—a moment, a breath, a clearing, a crack in the loop.
Not to conquer natural instincts, but to overwrite them, even momentarily.
Default Life isn’t determinism. It’s not that everything is fixed.
It’s that most of it runs on autopilot—quietly, invisibly—
even while you believe you’re choosing.
But it’s not you making the choices.
It’s it—Default Life—choosing through you.
And the moment you see that—really see it—
a real choice becomes possible.
If you’re lucky.
This isn't rationalism. You can't think or meditate your way out.
And sorry, there is no final victory over it. No finish line.
Here's what most never realize:
There is a frontier inside you.
People assume life is a city plan, a schedule, a series of deliberate choices. Yet there’s a subtle line they cross just once:
The moment people realize they aren’t living—they’re being lived.
Most of us never see it. But it's there. I guarantee it.
Until you see this frontier, you follow primordial life’s plan.
This is where you end up: marriage, house gone, visiting rights—
not as mistakes, but as inevitabilities.
Not you living life, but Default Life living you.
Once you glimpse the frontier, you can't unsee it.
There is no permanent escape from it. But clearly, quietly, you can step outside it sometimes—even just for a second—and make that choice that truly matters your own.