Either I've been missing something or nothing has been going on. — Karen Elizabeth Gordon

Either I've been missing something or nothing has been going on.

Author: Karen Elizabeth Gordon

Insight: There's a peculiar kind of anxiety that creeps in when you feel like life is moving past you—like everyone else got the memo about what's supposed to happen next, and you're still in the same place. Gordon captures that disorienting moment when you can't tell if you're being left behind or if the whole thing is just... static. The unsettling part is that both possibilities feel equally real and equally troubling. But there's something quietly radical here. Most of us lean hard into one explanation—we either blame ourselves for missing opportunities or we rage against a world that's gone nowhere. Gordon refuses that binary. She sits in the ambiguity, and that's actually where most of us actually live, even if we pretend otherwise. We're constantly second-guessing whether we're failing to notice something crucial or whether we're chasing a story everyone tells about progress that might not be true. The real insight is gentler than it first appears: sometimes the honest answer is that you don't know which it is, and that's okay. You can stop trying to solve the riddle and instead just keep showing up, paying attention, and moving forward without needing certainty about what you might be missing. The not-knowing itself can become your compass.