I woke again at around 3am, after five hours or so of sleep.
Nothing dramatic happened.
No crisis.
Just a dream, and a familiar feeling of being quietly awake while the rest of the world sleeps.
I’ve noticed something about myself over time:
when I name the questions I’m genuinely sitting with, it often unsettles other people.
Not because I’m trying to provoke —
but because I don’t soften the reality first.
What I’m Noticing
In a recent session, I spoke about something simple on the surface:
my son riding his bike into the road without checking.
What it brought up for me wasn’t panic — it was truth.
I can’t always keep him safe.
That’s not a thought many parents want to sit with for long.
And suddenly I realised: I could sit with it — but the room couldn’t.
Even the tutor seemed to want to contain or close things down.
At the time, I felt confused.
On reflection, it makes sense.
I didn’t introduce fear — I exposed it.
When Rationality Strips Meaning Away
Later, I found myself saying something that landed heavily:
Once everything is fully rationalised, there’s no inherent meaning left.
No obvious reason to keep going.
Someone offered absurdism as a response — and I understand it —
but to me, it still feels like an intellectual workaround.
A way to reassign meaning once the old ones collapse.
The truth is more uncomfortable.
I don’t feel, in my bones, that there is a built-in point to living.
This isn’t suicidal.
It’s not despair.
It’s clarity without cushioning.
Refusing the Easy Answer
It would be easy to say my son is my reason.
But that feels dishonest.
It doesn’t feel fair to use another human being as a shield against my own existential fear.
Even if I protect him.
Even if I love him deeply.
If I remove everyone else — what’s left?
That question has followed me for most of my life.
The Only Answer That Feels True (So Far)
What I’ve arrived at — quietly — is this:
The privilege to uncover myself.
Not to prove anything.
Not to leave a legacy.
Not to matter to the universe.
Just to know what it’s like to be me — without distortion, performance, or borrowed meaning.
It only really matters to me.
And that might be enough.
The Dream
In the dream, I was heading to some kind of important gathering.
There was someone there with gravitas — a record producer, a footballer, someone significant.
But I wasn’t dressed right.
I felt out of place.
And I never actually arrived.
What stayed with me wasn’t rejection —
it was misalignment.
As if I couldn’t enter unless I betrayed myself.
The Open Question
If life doesn’t come with meaning attached —
and if I refuse to borrow it from others —
what does it mean to live honestly anyway?
I don’t have an answer yet.
I’m just sitting with it.