This Is the Best Time to Be Alive. So Why Are We All Miserable?
We live longer than kings once did. We travel across continents in hours, not months. We swipe right to find love, click a button to summon dinner, and summon strangers to drive us wherever we want. We carry libraries in our pockets, edit our faces in real time, and outsource memory to machines. We treat boredom like a bug to be patched.
Groceries arrive without us stepping outside. We speak to glowing rectangles and call it connection. Entire careers are built on pixels and likes. We’ve delegated thinking to search engines, emotions to algorithms, and validation to strangers on the internet.
Plagues are now fought with mRNA and machine learning. And war? For most of us, it’s something we scroll past—tragic, yes, but distant. Rarely something we run from.
We are the most connected, entertained, informed, and comfortable generation in human history.
And yet…
Unhappiness might be the only thing we’ve scaled faster.
The Great Illusion
We bought into a lie.
That happiness is something you can buy, stream, or manifest. That if you just hustle hard enough, post consistently enough, optimize long enough, you’ll finally feel whole.
But happiness, it turns out, is a byproduct. Not a goal. Viktor Frankl said it clearly: “Happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue… as the unintended side effect of one’s dedication to a cause greater than oneself.”
We turned the pursuit of pleasure into a substitute for purpose. And we called it success.
Social Media, Mirror Mirror
Our tools are no longer tools. They’ve become the architects of our identity.
We used to compare ourselves to neighbors. Now we compare ourselves to the highlight reels of the internet’s top 0.1%. Creators, influencers, billionaires, crypto bros, wellness gurus. Everyone is selling something. Most of all, themselves.
So we feel behind. Behind in life, behind in looks, behind in purpose.
We internalize this as failure. And we reach for the one solution we’ve been conditioned to believe works: buy more. Scroll more. Work harder. Post more. Perform more.
More is the new meaning.
When Meaning Left the Room
Frankl saw it coming.
When people stop believing in something larger than themselves, they don’t believe in nothing. They believe in anything.
And modern life has handed us a buffet of anything:
Fame without service.
Consumption without contribution.
Comfort without challenge.
Validation without connection.
Influence without integrity.
But meaning doesn’t come from ease. It comes from effort. From saying: “This matters. I will carry it. Even if it breaks me.”
We’ve confused safety for salvation.
We’ve forgotten that the most fulfilled humans in history weren’t the most comfortable. They were the most devoted. The ones who suffered well. Who turned pain into poetry, loss into leadership, fear into fuel.
The Existential Vacuum
Call it what you want—burnout, boredom, the slow ache of “meh.” Frankl had a better term: the existential vacuum. That hollow hum beneath all the noise. When life is full but not fulfilling. Loud but not meaningful.
You can’t fill that vacuum with dopamine.
You fill it by asking better questions.
Not “How can I be happy?”
But “What is worth suffering for?”
Not “What should I do with my life?”
But “What does life expect of me?”
Not “What can I get?”
But “What am I here to give?”
The Quiet Rebellion
There is a rebellion, but it won’t trend.
It’s the quiet work of choosing meaning over metrics.
Of unplugging from the attention economy to pay attention to your soul.
Of creating instead of performing.
Of going deep instead of going viral.
It’s choosing to build something real in a world addicted to the unreal.
It’s saying: “I will not be defined by how comfortable I am. I will be defined by what I carry.”
Because yes, this may be the best time to be alive.
But it’s also the easiest time to be asleep.
And waking up—truly waking up—might be the most radical act of all.