Introduction¶
This book is a survival guide for the soul in an age of numbness. I wrote this book first and foremost as a message to myself—a way to wrestle deeply with the very themes I’ve been avoiding. Secondly, I write this book to all my brothers and sisters in what I call the 'Addicted Generation.' We, unfortunately, are a generation that hovers just above the surface of life—too afraid, or too unconscious, to go deep.
We are angry. We are directionless. We are fragile. We are fractured. We are distracted.
We’ve lost the rituals that once taught us when and how to grow up—to carry weight, to stand tall. School, despite its good intentions, has kept us caged—struggling to become autonomous adults in a society that desperately longs for the adult in the room. For the first twenty years of our lives we are given timetables and goals. We are told when to work and what to work on. As a teacher of over a decade, I have witnessed only a small percentage of kids who have actually engaged in seeking what life is and what it has to offer. An overwhelming majority of our kids are solely concerned with clothes, TikTok, and parties and treat their education not as a growing up and learning about the world, but as a necessary evil that they must trudge through because "my mother said so."
On top of this, modernity has "killed God" as Nietzsche put it. Regardless of our religious beliefs, we have removed all mystery from our collective thinking. We have flattened society into what we can measure and control. Contemporary religion presents God as an invisible man in the sky—a cosmic repairman summoned by prayer. We see God as an economic being—offering transactional exchanges if we have lived a good enough life. We have lost sight of the mystery of life. The unknown. The beautiful. And in doing so we have lost our "souls" along the way. We have lost the ability to dream and wonder. And this in turn has killed our relationship with life itself. We unknowingly live on the surface now—without the skill, or even the desire, to go deep. And this leaves us with a directionless and empty feeling.
The result is that we cling—to distraction, to entertainment, to anything that lets us avoid the ache. We fear silence because silence might demand something from us. And we turn to the endless scroll to hopefully discover a moment of meaning that we so deeply long for.
At least, that's what I have felt.
My addictions have been YouTube and pornography—one socially acceptable, the other shrouded in guilt and shame. Both became my escape from reality. And I am at a time in my life where I want to Grow Up. That's why I wrote this book.
As Paul famously wrote in 1 Corinthians 13.11, "When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me."
My hopes are that during the process of writing this book, I will initiate a change I want to see in myself, a deepening of the experience of life, a reshaping of my world view, a growing up. And it is my hope that by reading it, you will experience similar change. Much of this book carries a Christian flavour. I know that might leave a sour taste for some—but it's the language I grew up speaking. It's my home.
The book has two movements.
Part 1 is an exploration of how we have arrived here. Chapter 1 explores how autonomy is suppressed and how, without thresholds, we drift into adulthood unprepared. Chapter 2 explores how we’ve flattened life into only what can be measured, and what happens when we trade mystery for mastery. Chapter 3 confronts the aftermath—a culture of escape, where false gods promise meaning but leave us emptier.
Part 2 (Chapters 4–10) invites us into a path of spiritual transformation—a journey of dying to self and waking up to life. This section draws on the deep wisdom of the 12 step path, a path that I have walked for over 5 years. It is a reflection on why this path offers such a fitting antidote to the modern condition.
It brings me joy to share these thoughts with you. I hope they meet you where you are—and maybe even lead you somewhere new.