Without initiation, without rites of passage, without deep mentorship, people don’t become adults — they become workers who mistake productivity for identity. In practice this means you cling to your job title, your role, your output, or your usefulness because you were never shown how to anchor your worth in anything internal, ancient, or personal. Work becomes the one place where you know exactly what is expected of you, exactly how to perform, and exactly how to earn validation — so you pour your soul into it, even when it drains you. Men tend to fuse their entire worth to performance; women tend to fuse theirs to emotional labor — both are forms of identity collapse that leave the true self undeveloped. The blade cuts deepest when you realize you weren’t built for work to be your meaning — work only became meaning because you weren’t given anything deeper to stand on.