Why boredom, challenge, and attention—the ingredients of intrinsic drive—are getting harder to find.

For much of our lives, many of us were taught that political differences were something we could work around. We could disagree and still be friends. Vote differently and still care deeply for one another. Politics stayed in its own lane—important, but not something that defined our relationships. For many people, that separation no longer feels possible. Increasingly, people describe a different kind of strain: not just disagreement, but a sense that something more fundament

There’s a word I keep hearing lately—quietly, almost apologetically—from clients in my therapy office, from friends during long hikes, and even in my own private moments: unmoored. It’s not a clinical term. It’s not even a trendy buzzword. But it captures something many people are struggling to articulate: the sense that the ground beneath us is shifting, and the anchors we once relied on no longer hold. To feel unmoored is to lose your orientation. To drift. To reach for som