We grow up believing success is a place where we finally get to exhale. We starve for perfection, haunted by the curated museums of other people’s joy on our screens—the trophies, the golden hours. But we miss the long shadows cast behind them. We forget that the mountain isn’t just the summit; it is the bruised knees and the gasping for air. We treat our lives like failing performances because we are still in the messy middle, but the truth is, we are all just stumbling in the dark, trying to c