The 90% I Missed While Chasing the 10%

Source: Dev.to

I’m 21. I don’t have answers. I don’t have a success story to sell you. What I have is a growing pile of questions and a strange sense that I spent years preparing for life instead of actually living it.

This isn’t about productivity hacks or finding your passion. It’s about noticing what was always there while I was looking somewhere else.

Borrowed Beliefs

As a child, I lived on autopilot with beliefs I never chose. “Study hard today and your future will be good.” My parents said it. Teachers repeated it. Society nodded in agreement. So I believed it too, because everyone around me did. When your entire environment validates something, you don’t question it—you just accept it as truth.

I wasn’t stupid for believing it. I was a kid. Kids absorb their surroundings like water soaking into cloth.

Somewhere in 11th and 12th grade, something shifted. I didn’t consciously decide to step out of the race, but I did. I stopped caring about rankings and comparisons. I became more curious, more confused, and honestly, more chaotic. I had flaws—ego, moments of what I’d call an immature or even “evil” personality. But I was improving, slowly, without realizing it.

The Reading That Broke Things Open

Around 17, I started reading. Not because I loved it—I actually hated it at first. Books felt slow and boring compared to movies and YouTube. I started with comics, light stuff like Chacha Chaudhary, just to ease into it.

Reading made me curious about things I’d never questioned before:

• Who am I?
• What is society?
• Why do humans follow this endless cycle: study → job → marriage → children → repeat → death?
• Why does everyone talk about God but no one asks who created God?
• Why do animals seem freer than humans, even though we call ourselves intelligent?

I read things most people don’t stumble into at that age—Tantra Sutra, books on awareness and consciousness. I wasn’t seeking enlightenment; I was just trying to understand why life felt so unnecessarily complicated in my head.

I also watched things that hit differently: One Piece and Pixar’s Soul. These weren’t just entertainment—they became mirrors. Luffy doesn’t obsess over becoming Pirate King in some distant future; he lives fully while moving toward it. Soul showed me how people can spend their entire lives preparing to live, only to realize they forgot to actually live.

These experiences didn’t make me spiritual or wise. They made me question everything I thought was normal.

The Trap of Goals

At 19 and 20, I became obsessed with finding my purpose. I tried everything: car designing, army, navy, air force, cybersecurity, development, bug hunting. I kept waiting for something to “click,” for some voice inside to say, “Yes, this is it.”

Nothing clicked.

I wanted to earn millions—not for cars or luxury, but to fix things: villages, water systems, the environment. I believed that once I had enough money, I could finally do something meaningful.

I realize now how flawed that was. Action matters more than imagined future money. Waiting for the perfect condition is just another way of not starting.

Goals became my mental prison. I lived entirely in two places: the past, with regret over what I didn’t do, and the future, anxious about what I hadn’t achieved yet. The present? I was barely there.

I thought goals were 90 % of life: work toward something, achieve it, move to the next, repeat until death. That was the formula everyone seemed to follow.

The 90 % I Wasn’t Seeing

Then I realized something that felt obvious once I saw it, but I had missed it for years.

Goals are maybe 10 % of life. Maybe.

The other 90 %? It’s everything else.

• Talking to people and actually listening instead of waiting for your turn to speak.
• Eating food and noticing the taste instead of scrolling while you chew.
• Walking and feeling the ground under your feet.
• Breathing and knowing you’re breathing.
• Hearing birds in the morning.
• Sitting with your family without thinking about tomorrow.
• Being present with strangers.

This 90 % doesn’t show up on a résumé. It doesn’t trend on social media. It doesn’t make you rich or famous. But it’s where life actually happens.

I had been missing it completely. I was so focused on becoming someone in the future that I forgot I already am someone right now. I treated the present as a waiting room for a better tomorrow that never quite arrived.

Witnessing vs. Existing

There’s a difference between existing and witnessing.

• Existing is going through the motions: eating while thinking about work, walking while replaying a conversation, breathing without noticing, reacting out of habit.
• Witnessing is different. When you eat, you actually taste. When you walk, you feel your feet on the earth. When you breathe, you notice the air moving in and out. You act, but you’re aware. You respond instead of reacting.

This isn’t some mystical state. It’s just being here instead of being lost in your head.

One Piece taught me this in a way books couldn’t. Luffy doesn’t postpone joy until he finds the One Piece. He’s fully alive in every moment while moving toward his goal. He’s present with his crew—laughing, fighting, eating, living completely. The journey isn’t a burden to endure until he reaches the destination; the journey is the life.

Soul showed me the opposite—what happens when you’re so obsessed with finding your purpose that you forget to live while searching for it. Joe spent his whole life waiting for the one moment that would make everything make sense, only to realize life was happening the whole time, and he wasn’t there for it.

What I’m Not Saying

I’m not saying abandon goals. I’m not saying responsibility doesn’t matter. I’m not saying sit under a tree and meditate all day.

I’m saying something simpler:

Move toward your goals, but don’t become psychologically enslaved by them. Work, but… (the thought trails off, inviting you to finish the sentence for yourself).

Don’t let work consume the 90 % that makes life worth living.
Plan for the future, but don’t sacrifice the present to an imagined tomorrow.

Life isn’t a problem to solve. It’s not a race to win. It’s not a puzzle where you finally figure everything out and then relax.

Life is this. Right now. The breath you just took. The light coming through your window. The sound of the world around you.

Still Learning

I’m still figuring this out. I still get lost in my head. I still worry about the future. I still set goals and chase them. But now I’m trying to notice when I’m here and when I’m not.

I’m learning to witness instead of just exist. To listen instead of just hear. To see instead of just look.

I don’t know if this is wisdom or just confusion that sounds better organized. I’m 21. I have more questions than answers. I have more failures than successes. I have more doubts than certainty.

But I’m starting to think that’s okay.

Maybe life isn’t about having it all figured out. Maybe it’s about being present while you figure it out. Maybe the goal isn’t to reach some final destination where everything makes sense. Maybe it’s to live fully while moving forward, even when nothing makes sense.

I’m still reading. Still questioning. Still learning. Still missing the present sometimes while thinking about tomorrow.

But I’m trying.

And maybe that’s enough for now.