Musings | Date: May 8th, 2026.

Yes, that’s right. An illusion.

We seek to be rich, so we work 14 hour days, even in the face of familial destruction.

We seek to be more beautiful, because everyone on Instagram looks picture perfect.

We seek “success” because that’s what everyone tells us will answer our prayers.

To what end? Do any of these things actually get us what we want? Happiness. Contentment. Inner stillness.

Let’s look at this…

I once had a client who’d be diagnosed with a rare neurological disease, aggravated by stress. We talked for many hours about the possible root cause. He knew it, just as I did. It was his work.

He worked crazy long hours day after day for a firm who undervalued him. With people he didn’t much like. Over an hour’s commute from home. He was miserable, unhealthy, and rarely saw his wife—or children.

Needless to say, the hours he kept at work dicated the quality of his life. He had no hobbies. Few friends. No intimacy with his wife. And he couldn’t remember the last time they’d gone on holiday as a family.

As a result of his diagnosis and likely root cause, I asked him what he planned to do differently. 

I gave him a moment to let the word land… “Nothing“….and then I said, “Why would you do nothing to change the very thing that’s putting your life at risk?”

His answer highlights the very essence of this post.

“Because, me doing what I do is what’s expected of me. I can’t just stop.” 

I felt a sense of deep sadness.

Could he not see that there would be no promotion if this disease took hold? That his children would lose their father and his wife, her husband?

I kept asking myself: Why would anyone make a life choices like this, even when they know it could destroy them? Even when they know the answer makes no sense? Even when they know our words aren’t true?

Those questions circled my mind for months.

This man (and many like him) are trapped in what I call the Illusion Trap. They live in a bubble, a bit like the Truman Show, doing what they’ve been told to do their whole life, without ever questioning the rationale. They get up, work, eat, sleep, repeat. Day after day. Always striving for an illusion of happiness that might never come.

Their belief: If I work harder and reach the next goal, I’ll be happy.

But if you play the story out, it generally goes like this. The wife ends up feeling so empty and miserable, she asks for a divorce. They sell the family home. The children’s school fees are so expensive, the vast majority of his salary goes to caring for them. He ends up in an apartment with no outside space.
The wife moves on.
He never seens the children, because they have their own lives. And a colleague got the promotion because in the breakdown of his family, his work had slipped.

If people stopped for a moment. Like really stopped. They would see the insanity of this process we call “normal”.

Working so hard that we let beautiful days drift by. Summers pass. For what? For the possibility that one day, somewhere in a future (that might never happen), you find happiness.

Life my friend is here, today. And you get to choose how it plays out.

Culture has brainwashed us to think that the only way to find happiness is through an insatiable desire for more. It’s not true.

With love. x

Note: This story is for illustration purposes only.