Have you ever stopped for a moment and wondered, have we lost our souls?

I don’t mean in some mystical, supernatural way. I mean in the way we live, the choices we make, the contradictions we embody. We learn what is right, yet we practice what is wrong. We teach values, yet we abandon them outside the classroom. It’s almost as if we are playing roles in a theater of life, where the script demands integrity, but the actors keep improvising with hypocrisy.

And the result? A slow, almost imperceptible erosion of our souls. We chase success, money, validation, and power, but in the process, we leave behind the very essence of who we are.

The saddest part? Many of us don’t even notice. But for those who do, there comes a moment, a quiet, unsettling moment, when they catch their own reflection in the mirror and feel a deep sense of shame.

One of my friends recently confessed, “I don’t even know who I am anymore. I do what I’m supposed to do, but I feel nothing. I say things I don’t believe. I pretend to care about things that mean nothing to me. Where did I go wrong?”

I wanted to answer, but I didn’t know what to say. Because honestly, I feel it too.

I don’t think it’s easy to find your true self in today’s world, especially in the relentless rat race of capitalism. Everything revolves around business, money, and profits.

Even education, which is supposed to nurture the mind and soul, has become a corporate industry. Universities and colleges, once temples of knowledge, now operate like businesses. Students aren’t seen as learners but as customers.

The quality of education? That’s often determined by what’s cost-effective rather than what’s transformative.

One student I spoke to was furious. “If private colleges are only interested in making money, why don’t they just invest in real estate instead of playing with our futures?”

She had a point. When profit is prioritized over learning, the soul of education is lost. Instead of producing thinkers, creators, and problem-solvers, we mass-produce graduates who struggle to find their place in the world.

A job seeker I met at a career fair put it bluntly. “I’d rather be a novelist than an unprofessional engineer or an unqualified lecturer.”

It hit me. He was right. What’s the point of having a degree if it doesn’t reflect real knowledge or skill? If education is just a transaction, pay money, get a certificate, then what’s left of its true purpose?

Maybe that’s why I’ve been thinking about becoming a novelist myself. Not because I believe writing books will make me rich, but because, at the very least, it will allow me to be honest.

Writing doesn’t ask me to pretend. It doesn’t require me to fit into a system that values numbers over souls. It lets me express, question, and explore, without faking enthusiasm for something I don’t believe in.

In a world where people chase promotions, job titles, and corporate approval, I wonder what it would feel like to chase meaning instead. What if success wasn’t measured by salary, but by the depth of what we create? What if we valued a well-crafted sentence as much as a well-constructed building? What if passion mattered more than practicality?

I don’t have all the answers. Maybe none of us do. But what I do know is that the first step to regaining our souls is to realize that we’ve lost them in the first place. Maybe, just maybe, that’s where the journey back begins. And maybe, for me, that journey starts with a blank page and a pen.