Prologue

I vividly remember being an angst-ridden teen, just finding my feet at university and questioning why I was here—as in, alive. It was a soul-searching “Why me? What did I do to deserve this?” As if being alive was some sort of punishment, a trial, something to be endured.

I was drawn to tortured writings like Kafka’s The Trial and The Castle, and to music steeped in longing and despair: the Adagietto from Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, Albinoni’s Adagio in G minor. I even wrote embarrassingly turgid poetry, questioning whether there was any meaning to being alive, whether there was any value in going on.

The surprising thing is that I was also having a really enjoyable time at university. This soul-searching wasn’t the whole of me, but it was an identity I clung to, believing it represented something fundamental about being human.

At some point, most of us face a similar existential crisis—a dark night when the very fact of existence feels precarious. Questions arise like shadows: Why am I here? What if there is no meaning? What happens when I die? In those moments, the ground seems to give way, leaving us suspended over an abyss.