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What I Learned from a Fairy Tale About Personal Transformation

satyadoylebyock.substack.com · 1,907 words · saved by 1 readers

In my first years of college, I would often sit at my linoleum desk in my dorm room and stare into the distance. I was locked in a riddle: trying to make sense of this cultural obsession with academia and the expected journey for privileged young people like myself. In class after class, I was learning nothing of practical value and very little about who I was as a person. I liked what I was studying, but couldn’t envision a future beyond graduation. At the time, my country was on an unstoppable march towards multiple wars in the Middle East, the justification for which I knew to be bullshit. I felt no meaning in what I was doing, and juxtaposed against the obsession with power and militarism outside, everything began to feel increasingly meaningless. I was already approaching burnout, already wrestling with existential questions that wouldn’t abate for years. After months of this dissociated confusion, I took a leave of absence from school. I began to travel to—as far as the official

What I Learned from a Fairy Tale About Personal Transformation In the absence of rituals and initiation rites, many of us feel called towards danger, fear, and suffering Satya Doyle Byock Aug 17, 2025 84 15 16 Share “We were supposed to be introduced to the gods and to ourselves.” Illustration of the giant and the youth by Albert Weisgerber, 1910 Subscribe In my first years of college, I would often sit at my linoleum desk in my dorm room and stare into the distance. I was locked in a riddle: trying to make sense of this cultural obsession with academia and the expected journey for privileged

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