You’re Not Lost. You’re Inside the Matrix.

Last summer, I was at a graduation party talking with a young person who was excited about heading to college in the fall. They were thoughtful, curious, and optimistic about what was coming next.

At the end of our conversation, they asked me, “How necessary do you think college really is?”

They knew I had earned a master’s degree, so I could tell they were expecting a strong opinion one way or the other. Instead, I asked them a different question.

Are you going to college for learning, for the experience, or for the credential?

They paused, thought about it, and then admitted they didn’t really know how to answer.

(By the way, ​I don’t know is a GREAT answer​.)

That moment stuck with me because it revealed something we rarely talk about. We prepare people to enter major life systems without ever helping them understand what those systems are actually designed to do. When something feels off later, we assume the problem is personal.

Most of the time, it isn’t.

When Something Feels Wrong, but You Can’t Explain It

Most people don’t wake up one day and decide they’re unhappy or anxious. It’s usually quieter than that. Something feels misaligned. Progress doesn’t feel satisfying. Success doesn’t deliver what it promised.

We feel it, but we can’t name it.

So we work harder. We chase better credentials. We pursue the next promotion or fixate on retirement as the reward that will make it all make sense. We’re trying to solve a feeling by optimizing inside systems we don’t fully see.

Once you start seeing systems clearly, something interesting happens. You stop asking how to win inside them, and you start asking what actually matters to you.

That shift is where everything begins.

Education Isn’t About Learning. It’s About Credentials.

Education is usually the first major system we enter.

We talk about post-high school education as if it were the same thing as learning. But learning today is abundant, inexpensive, and available almost anywhere in the world. The best lectures, courses, and ideas are accessible to anyone with an internet connection. If your only goal is to learn, that problem has largely been solved.

So why does education cost so much?

Because learning isn’t the primary product.

Post-high school education is, in most cases, a credentialing system. Degrees, certificates, brand names, and institutional validation act as signals. They tell the outside world that someone passed through a particular filter. Those signals can open doors, reduce uncertainty, and simplify decisions for employers and institutions.

Credentials can be useful. In some fields, they are required. In others, they function as filters rather than guarantees. And for many families, college is also about experience and maturation. Time away from home. Exposure to new ideas. Learning how to live independently. Getting into trouble in a safer environment (this is my favorite).

The trouble begins when we pretend all of this is primarily about learning.

When we do that, costs feel irrational and debt feels unnecessary. When we name the system accurately, confusion drops and choice returns.

The Career and Retirement Script We Inherited

After education comes the career ladder. Progress is defined as moving up. Stability is defined as staying put. Identity becomes attached to role and title. For a while, this works.

Then, at the end of the ladder, we’re told there’s a reward waiting. Retirement.

What most people don’t realize is that retirement, like education, was never designed around human fulfillment. It was designed around workforce management. The modern idea of retirement emerged from an industrial economy where retirement ages were set based on economic math, not meaning. NOTE: if you are interested in how retirement came to be a thing, ​Tom Marks writes an excellent resource about it​.

The goal was not to help people transition into a purposeful next phase of life. It was to move them out of the system.

Fast forward to today. People live longer. Work is less physical and more cognitive. Identity is deeply tied to contribution. And yet we still cling to the idea that stopping at an arbitrary age makes sense for everyone.

I’ve seen what happens when it doesn’t. People who did everything right, planned carefully, and hit the number they were aiming for, only to discover that the structure, purpose, and identity holding their life together disappeared quietly.

Many who then lost their life meaning feel the problem is personal when it’s actually the system.

You Can’t Change the Matrix Until You See It

None of these systems are inherently evil. Education, careers, retirement. They were designed to solve real problems in a different era, and for a time, they worked.

The danger isn’t that systems exist. The danger is that we don’t realize we’re inside them.

There’s a moment in The Matrix when Neo realizes that the unease he’s felt his entire life wasn’t imaginary. Something really was wrong with the world. The rules he’d been following weren’t natural. They were imposed.

Until that moment, he could feel the friction but couldn’t explain it. He tried to succeed inside the system. He adapted. He assumed the discomfort was personal.

Only after he understands that he’s in the Matrix does anything change. Not because the system disappears, but because he can finally see it. Awareness comes first. Choice comes second.

The same thing happens with the systems we live inside.

As long as we don’t name them, they feel like reality itself. We optimize, comply, and blame ourselves when something feels off. The moment you name a system, you get something back that most people don’t realize they’ve lost.

Choice.

Once a system is visible, it stops feeling like fate. You may still choose to participate in it, but you do so consciously. You understand what it rewards, what it ignores, and what it was never designed to provide.

Seeing the Matrix doesn’t destroy it. It breaks the illusion.

Meaning Comes Before Success

After years of watching people move through these systems, I’ve come to a simple conclusion.

Our true calling isn’t success. It’s meaning.

When people find meaning, success and happiness tend to follow (if this resonates with you, read Victor Frankl’s ​Man’s Search for Meaning​). Not always immediately, and not in a straight line, but meaning helps you make decisions when the old playbooks stop working.

Systems don’t optimize for meaning. They optimize for scale, efficiency, and predictability. Meaning must be chosen, and it often requires stepping slightly out of alignment with default paths.

That discomfort isn’t a warning sign. It’s usually the first signal that you’re finally paying attention.

Tilt as an Expression of Meaning

I use the word Tilt (in ​Burn the Playbook​) to describe the small but meaningful angle each of us brings to the world. It’s not a job title or a niche. It’s a pattern.

It shows up in what you’re drawn to, the problems you can’t stop thinking about, and the questions you keep asking even when they seem silly on the inside.

Most people feel that pull early in life and then suppress it to fit into systems that reward sameness. Finding your Tilt isn’t about blowing up your life or rejecting every system. It’s about noticing what’s already there and deciding to take it seriously.

The goal isn’t to escape the Matrix entirely. That’s not realistic or necessary.

The goal is to see it clearly enough to decide what matters.

Seeing systems clearly doesn’t give you answers. It gives you better questions. And better questions are usually where meaning begins.