Why an entire generation feels exhausted from trying to become itself Press enter or click to view image in full size photo by Vitaly Gariev from Unsplash When I was little, my grandmother often told me I would become a doctor. She said it with a kind of quiet certainty, as if some lives were already decided before we had even begun living them. I used to tell her I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to spend my days watching people suffer. I still remember the way she looked at me, somewhere between amusement and confusion, as if I were refusing something essential. To her, being a doctor meant being useful. As I grew older, I began hearing something different. I was told I needed to choose my path, to find my passion. And slowly, the questions changed. At school, I was expected to have opinions and choose a direction that felt “aligned” with my personality, my desires, my natural abilities. People were no longer asking me only what I wanted to do. They were asking me who I was.…