Unavailable

Hey, it's Sunday Morning,

I used to be an expert dream chaser.

"You are the one to succeed."

"Keep going, you'll go far."

"You can do for us what no one can."

I carried those dreams like they were mine—across an ocean, through decades, into boardrooms and late nights and the relentlessness of a life that looked, from the outside, like everything I was supposed to want.

I checked every box they gave me and kept running because stopping would mean confronting a question I wasn't ready to ask.

The business chugged along, the bank account was steady. The distance between who I was and who I'd become grew too, but I told myself that was the cost of success. That's what it takes and what they expected. That's what I owed them.

I worked harder and built something I could point to and say: "See? I did it. I was the one."

But I was tired in a way sleep couldn't fix. The kind of tired that settles in your bones. The kind of tired that makes you forget what you used to laugh at, what used to move you, what used to make you feel alive before the chase began.

I told myself it would ease up. After this quarter, after the kids were older. But the finish line kept moving.

And somewhere in all that running, I stopped noticing what I was running past: my daughter asking if I wanted to dance in the kitchen, my son trying to show me something he'd built, my wife suggesting we take a walk, just the two of us, the music I used to play on weekends before the to-do list took over.

I wasn't absent. I was there—physically, at least. But I was always thinking about the next thing, the next problem to solve, the next proof I needed to deliver.

I became very good at being unavailable while standing in the same room.

Then I turned 58. A freshly minted empty-nester, still feeling like a lost kid. And one night, a clear voice jolted me out of my sleep:

"You'd left the island. Got the girl. Got the car, the house, the beautiful kids. What the hell is wrong with you?"

In a stupor, I thought: What just happened? Is my mind playing tricks on me?

But the voice was as strong as it was clear. I'd done everything they said I would do, everything they needed me to do.

And I'd kept running anyway—as if there were something left to prove, some final box to check that would let me stop and breathe and say: "Now. Now I've earned it. Now I can rest."

But there was no box. Just the exhaustion from carrying dreams that were never mine.

So I stopped searching. I sold the business. I'd succeeded at the wrong thing for too long, and I'd become unavailable there too. I began to find happiness in what I already had, not in what I wanted.

I started to work like I didn't need the money, focussing instead on the joy and fulfillment my work brings me.

I began to show up fully—not just physically, but present, awake, there.

I dance in my kitchen like no one is watching—a long-lost treasure and a reminder of the beat that once fueled my young soul. It took me decades and a jolting voice to hear it again.

For anyone still chasing the dream, listen carefully—there's music playing. And, if like my old self, you are not dancing to it—What the hell is wrong with you?

Until next Sunday.