We are a society of notoriously unhappy people: lonely, anxious, depressed, destructive, dependent — people who are glad when we have killed the time we are trying so hard to save.

Running from the life we're building

There's something darkly funny about how hard we work to escape the very life we're building. We rush through Tuesday to get to Friday, skip lunch to leave early, and then spend the weekend scrolling in a daze—relieved to have "gotten through" the week we paid for with our time and energy. It's like we're running from ourselves while also chasing ourselves.

What Self is really pointing at is the gap between how we think we should live and how we actually feel living it. We've optimized everything—productivity systems, meal plans, dating apps—yet there's this low hum of dissatisfaction underneath it all. The loneliness persists even in crowded rooms. The anxiety doesn't quiet just because we checked off our tasks. And maybe that's because we're treating life like a problem to solve rather than something to actually inhabit.

The sharpest part of his observation is that last bit: we're glad when we've killed the time we're trying to save. We want to optimize our lives into happiness, but what we're really doing is numb-scrolling through them, waiting for something better. Real satisfaction seems to come less from having more time and more from being present in whatever time we actually have—from stopping the killing and starting the living.