Everyone loses in the end
March 22, 2026
6 min read
death • freedom • identity • ego
You do this thing sometimes that makes me stop.
Someone asks you how you know something — a word, a fact, some small piece of the world — and you say, "Daddy thought me."
You say it with such confidence. Like the information is solid because it came from me. Like I'm a reliable source.
And every time you say it, something tightens in my chest. Because the truth is, I'm not always sure that what I taught you is right. I'm not always sure that what I know is true. I believe it is. I try to make sure it is. But I've been wrong before, about things I was just as confident about.
That's a strange thing to carry — knowing that someone trusts your answers more than you trust them yourself.
I used to think certain things were simple.
People compete, step on each other, try to get ahead, try to look important, try to prove that they matter. They chase money, titles, comfort, admiration, and the whole time they act as if this thing goes on forever. As if life is a long road with plenty of time to waste. As if the game is normal and the goal is obvious.
But it isn't.
We are dying. Not in some dramatic poetic way. Literally. Every day something is gone. Time is being spent whether we know how to spend it or not. The hours go. The body changes. People get older. Parents get older. Children grow. Doors close. And most of the time we live as if none of this is happening.
For a long time I thought that fact solved everything.
If we all die, then the answer must be clear. Stop caring so much about status. Stop wasting life trying to impress other people. Stop confusing appearance with substance. Focus on what matters. Spend more time with people you love. Build a life that is actually yours instead of one that just looks right from the outside.
A lot of that still feels true to me.
It still seems wiser to choose things that make life more livable than things that mainly decorate it. A car is a good example because it can go in either direction. One person buys a car because it genuinely makes life easier: less stress, more movement, more time, easier family logistics, more room to breathe. Another buys a car mainly because it looks expensive, because it says something, because it fills some hole inside, because other people will see it and silently rank him a little higher. Same object. Different relationship to it.
The thing itself isn't always the problem. It's the meaning attached to it. The small religion around it.
So yes, I still think death cuts through a lot of nonsense. The Stoics were right to keep it in sight. Remembering death can expose how ridiculous many of our obsessions are. It can force a hard question: if your time is limited, why are you giving so much of it to things that don't deserve it?
And yet lately I've started distrusting even this answer.
Because the moment I say, "Ignore status and choose freedom," I run into another problem.
What do I mean by freedom? And where did I get that answer from?
Is it really mine? Or is it another idea I picked up, another identity I stitched together from books, reactions, fear, ego, and whatever culture happened to reward?
That's where things stopped being neat.
You'll hear people talk about philosophers like they have the answers figured out. They don't. But the good ones ask questions that stay with you. One that stayed with me comes from a woman named Simone de Beauvoir. She said something I'll paraphrase loosely: it's not enough to talk about freedom — you have to look honestly at your own life and ask whether the freedom you think you have is real, or whether it's already compromised by things you never chose and never questioned.
That bothered me. Because when I looked honestly, I wasn't sure.
How much of what I call my philosophy is actually mine?
How many of my projects are alive because I chose them, and how many are alive because I built an identity around effort and no longer know how to stop? How much of my discipline is strength, and how much of it is fear? How much of what I reject — the status games, the material chase — am I rejecting because it is genuinely false, and how much because I need to feel separate from people who want more ordinary things?
Because it means even depth can become vanity. Even simplicity can become vanity. Even doing hard things and choosing effort can become vanity. Even rejecting status can become its own status game. The ego can wear almost anything. A watch. A philosophy. Even humility.
That's why I no longer trust clean conclusions as quickly as I used to.
Yes, everyone loses in the end. The body goes. The money stays behind. The image fades. The applause dies. Whether you were praised or ignored, rich or poor, careful or reckless, time wins.
But maybe that fact isn't supposed to give us an answer.
Maybe it's only supposed to take away our excuses.
Because once you know your time is running out, you can't pretend anymore. You can't say "I'll figure it out later." You have to look at the thing you're giving your life to and ask yourself — honestly — is this what I chose, or is this just what I ended up doing?
That changes the question.
It's no longer just: given that I will die, what should I value?
The harder question is: which of the things I value are actually mine? Which desires were planted in me before I could examine them? Which ambitions are alive because they are true, and which because they are flattering?
I don't have a clean answer for you. I'm not sure there is one. Maybe that is the real work — not just building, earning, improving, but stopping. Looking. Cutting through one lie after another. Trying, as much as possible, not to hand your life over to things you never consciously chose. Not to follow idols blindly, or believe authors just because they wrote something that sounded true at the right time.
One day you'll stop saying "Daddy thought me." You'll start finding your own answers. And some of the things I told you will turn out to be wrong, or incomplete, or true for me but not for you. That's fine. That's how it's supposed to go.
I just hope that when that happens, you don't stop questioning. Not just the things other people told you. But the things that sound wise. The things that feel like yours. Especially those.
That's what I'm trying to do right now. Not always well. But I'm trying.
Everyone loses in the end.
I'd like to think that what matters is whether, before that happens, we managed to live by something real.
— Dad