You ran into them at the shopping mall. Ten years later. They recognized you, you recognized them. But you both knew—the person you were recognizing was no longer there.

Five minutes into the conversation, you noticed your voice had gotten a little too high. Just like in those school days. You talked about your job as if it had always been your dream. They talked about their marriage, kids, car. But in their eyes, that old restlessness. Your coffee was getting cold, but you couldn’t let go of the cup—as if it were your anchor.

Sartre once said that the identity we create for others becomes our real prison. But the actual question is—why are we afraid to leave this prison?

Standing there in the mall, you realized your friend was also performing a character, just like you. You were both trying to prove to each other that you were “doing well.” But who defined what “doing well” meant? Who decided that a specific job, a specific kind of relationship, a specific lifestyle equals “success”?

The mall buzzed around you—families shopping, teenagers laughing, elderly couples walking slowly hand in hand. All of it felt like a stage set. Everyone playing their parts. You and your old friend, two actors who’d rehearsed different scripts but ended up in the same scene anyway.

They asked about your life with practiced interest. You answered with practiced enthusiasm. The conversation followed a predictable rhythm—job, relationship status, where you’re living, what you’re doing. Surface questions receiving surface answers. Neither of you asked what really mattered: Are you happy? Do you feel alive? What keeps you awake at night?

Because asking those questions would mean admitting we don’t have good answers.

Here lies our era’s greatest paradox. The more “connected” we become, the deeper our loneliness grows. But this isn’t ordinary loneliness—it’s collective solitude. We are alone together. We’re all performing on the same stage, reading the same script, but none of us is having a real conversation with anyone.

You watched their mouth move, forming words about promotions and vacation plans. But you heard what they weren’t saying. The compromise they made with their dreams. The person they thought they’d become versus who they actually are. The gap between the life they’re living and the life they imagined.

You recognized it because you carry the same gap.

In school, you both had wild ambitions. They wanted to be an artist. You wanted to write novels. Now they’re in middle management. You’re in a stable job that pays the bills. When did the shift happen? When did “practical” become more important than “passionate”? When did you both agree to stop being who you wanted to be and start being who you were supposed to be?

Heidegger’s concept of authenticity suggested that facing death, humans discover their true being. But in our case, that moment comes when we realize—our old identities have died. And facing this death, we find our authentic selves.

Or we could find them, if we had the courage to look.

Your friend pulled out their phone to show you pictures. Beautiful house. Beautiful children. Beautiful life, perfectly framed and filtered. You nodded appreciatively, showed them your own curated highlights. Both of you presenting evidence that everything turned out fine, better than fine, exactly as it should.

But standing there in the artificial mall lighting, under the gentle hum of air conditioning and distant muzak, you felt the weight of the performance. Your face hurt from smiling. Your throat hurt from the forced brightness in your voice. Everything hurt from pretending this encounter meant something when you both knew it was just nostalgia colliding with reality.

The past you were mourning didn’t even exist. Not really. Memory had smoothed the rough edges, highlighted the good parts, created a mythology of friendship that may have been more fragile than you remember. You weren’t grieving the actual past. You were grieving the story you told yourself about the past.

When you said goodbye, they gave your shoulder a pat. A pretense of friendship. “We should do this again sometime,” they said. You both knew you wouldn’t. Going up the escalator, you saw them typing something on their phone—probably thinking about their next appointment.

The encounter was already being filed away, transformed into an anecdote they might tell later. “Ran into an old friend today,” they’d say casually, as if it meant nothing. As if you hadn’t once known each other’s secrets, shared dreams, believed you’d be in each other’s lives forever.

In the parking lot, you realized that in the past half hour, you hadn’t laughed genuinely once. That laughter was performance. You were trying to prove to them that you were happy. But who said happiness always means smiling? Who said being successful means fitting yourself into others’ measurements?

Sitting in your car, turning on the radio, you felt how tense your shoulders were. You had been holding a pose all this time. Perfect posture. Perfect smile. Perfect life. The performance continued even when the audience left.

You drove home on autopilot, mind replaying the conversation, analyzing every moment. What did they really think? Did they see through your act? Did they notice how your hands trembled slightly when you mentioned your job? Did they catch that pause before you answered whether you were happy?

That night, lying in bed, you wondered—why did I need to prove anything to this person? You tried to remember when you last did something purely for yourself, without fear of anyone’s judgment. The answer didn’t come easily.

Most of your choices were calculated. This career because it’s stable. This relationship because it’s appropriate. This lifestyle because it’s expected. You’d built a life that looked good from the outside, that satisfied everyone’s definition of success except maybe your own.

When did you stop listening to your own voice? When did external validation become more important than internal peace? When did you trade authenticity for approval?

Then you noticed that being able to ask this question was itself a beginning. The fact that the encounter disturbed you, that you couldn’t just file it away and move on, meant something still alive inside you. Some part that remembered who you were before you learned who you were supposed to be.

And that night, lying alone in the darkness, you felt for the first time that being alone didn’t mean being lonely. It meant being honest with yourself.

The mall encounter was a mirror. Not reflecting who you are now, but showing the distance between then and now. The person you recognized wasn’t them—it was yourself. The stranger you’d become. The performance you’d perfected. The life you’d built that somehow felt like it belonged to someone else.

Maybe that’s what these encounters are for. Not to reconnect with old friends, but to reconnect with old selves. To see clearly what we’ve lost and what we’ve gained. To ask whether the trade was worth it.

The answer, lying there in the dark, wasn’t clear yet. But at least now you were asking the question. And that felt like the first honest thing you’d done in years.