Last night, around 11:30, I found myself sitting at the kitchen counter again, staring at the dishwasher I’d just loaded. The house was quiet. Everything was exactly as it should be — clean counters, tomorrow’s coffee prepped, everything prepped for the morning routine. And yet there I was, feeling like an actor who’d forgotten he was still wearing his costume after the show ended.
This feeling has been visiting me more often lately. Not depression, exactly. Not unhappiness. Something more like disconnection — as if I’ve become so skilled at executing the mechanics of adult life that I’ve lost touch with the person actually living it.
The checklist looks good on paper. At 37, I’ve got the things I’m supposed to have: the mortgage, the family, the daily rhythms that suggest stability. I show up to work, handle responsibilities, cook decent meals. My daughter gets her bath every night at 7:15. The bills are on autopay. We have a retirement account. These are victories, supposedly.
But sometimes success feels like the world’s most comfortable straightjacket.
I’ve been thinking about this disconnect ever since reading a passage in Thich Nhat Hanh’s work about “habit energy” — how we can become so caught in our patterns that we stop actually experiencing our lives. We become efficient at living without being present for it. In my book Hidden Secrets of Buddhism: How To Live With Maximum Impact and Minimum Ego, I explored how Buddhism teaches us to recognize these automatic patterns. But recognizing them and breaking free are two different challenges.
The strange part is that I chose this life deliberately. After spending my mid-20s feeling lost and anxious despite doing everything “right” by conventional standards, I thought I’d figured out what mattered. Meeting my wife in Vietnam, building a life together, recently becoming a father — these weren’t accidents. They were conscious choices made by someone who’d already experienced the emptiness of checking society’s boxes without understanding why.
Yet here I am, checking new boxes with the same mechanical precision.
My daughter is just a baby now. When she was born, I told myself everything would feel different — that parenthood would snap me out of whatever fog I was in. And it did, for a while. Those first weeks were raw and immediate and impossibly real. Every cry demanded presence. Every smile felt like a small miracle. But then routine crept back in, as routine does. Now I can change a diaper while mentally drafting an email. I can rock her to sleep while planning tomorrow’s tasks. The magic gets buried under competence.
This is what nobody tells you about adult life: you can get so good at it that you forget you’re living it. You perfect the choreography of your days until you could perform them in your sleep. And maybe you are performing them in your sleep, in a way.
I remember my warehouse job period — my lowest point, feeling like my education was wasted, my potential squandered. Back then, I fantasized about having exactly what I have now. A real career. A loving partner. A home that felt like home. I promised myself I’d never take these things for granted if I got them. But gratitude, it turns out, requires presence. And presence is exactly what efficient living tends to eliminate.
The Buddhist concept of “beginner’s mind” keeps coming back to me. Shunryu Suzuki wrote about approaching each moment as if encountering it for the first time, without the weight of assumption or habit. But how do you maintain beginner’s mind when making the same breakfast, driving the same route, having the same evening conversations about daycare pickups and grocery lists?
Some nights, after everyone’s asleep, I try an experiment. I walk through my house like a stranger would, attempting to see it fresh. The photos on the walls — when did we take that one? The books on the shelf — why did I buy that particular one? The toys scattered across the living room floor — evidence of a life being lived, even if I’m not fully present for it.
What scares me isn’t that I’m unhappy. It’s that I’m comfortable being disconnected. That I’ve mastered the performance so well I barely notice I’m performing.
My wife sometimes catches me in these moments of distance. She’ll ask what I’m thinking about, and I struggle to answer because I’m not thinking about anything specific. I’m just… elsewhere. Floating above my life, watching it happen. She understands, I think. Cross-cultural relationships teach you that everyone has their own way of being absent even when present.
The solution isn’t to blow up the life I’ve built. That’s the mistake I would have made in my 20s — confusing restlessness with a need for dramatic change. Now I know that wherever you go, you take your patterns with you. A new city, a new job, a new routine — they’re just different stages for the same performance.
Instead, I’m learning to catch myself in the act. When I notice I’m on autopilot — loading the dishwasher without remembering the dinner we just ate, reading my daughter a story without hearing the words — I try to stop. Take a breath. Feel the weight of the plate in my hand, hear the rhythm of the story. It’s harder than it sounds. Presence is a muscle that atrophies quickly in the age of optimization and multitasking.
There’s a meditation practice where you simply note what’s happening: “sitting,” “breathing,” “thinking.” Lately, I’ve been doing this with my roles: “fathering,” “husbanding,” “working.” Not to diminish them, but to notice when I’m inhabiting them versus when they’re inhabiting me. The difference is subtle but crucial.
Perhaps this is what growing up really means — not the accumulation of responsibilities and routines, but learning to stay awake inside them. Learning to be both the actor and the audience, the performer and the person. My daughter won’t remember these late-night kitchen moments, but maybe that’s not the point. Maybe the point is that I’m here, trying to remember myself, trying to stay present for the life I worked so hard to build.
Tomorrow morning, the routine will begin again. Breakfast, bottles, the careful dance of getting everyone out the door. I’ll probably slip back into autopilot before my second cup of coffee. But maybe I’ll catch myself. Maybe I’ll feel the warmth of my daughter’s hand gripping my finger. Maybe I’ll really taste that coffee. Maybe I’ll remember that I’m not just playing a role — I’m living a life. The distinction matters more than I ever imagined it would.
