At first, we are architects.

We are born a wild, unmapped landscape. Somewhere lies a swamp of secret wants, somewhere cliffs of irrational fear, somewhere clearings of pure, causeless joy. Very early on, though, an inner perfectionist wakes up with a master plan for the build-out.

He isn’t a tyrant. He’s a decorator. He undertakes the terraforming of a personality. “That swamp is indecent. Drain it. Cover it with the gravel of ‘proper principles’. Here we’ll erect the pavilion called ‘My Achievements’.” He eyes the thorny shrub of spontaneous anger and decides, “Unseemly. Uproot it. In its place we’ll plant the perfectly trimmed hedge of ‘Politeness and Restraint’.”

Inch by inch, the wild nature of the soul turns into a spotless stone garden.

Then we become docents.

We lead people along the paths of this museum of self. Proudly we point at façades, narrating harmony and order. And under no circumstances do we confess that our flawless garden rests on a thin crust of cooled lava beneath which a sleeping volcano still breathes.

At the garden’s center we raise the chief idol — a plaster statue named “My Infallibility,” covered in gold leaf.

And at last we become guards. We build an invisible wall of “rules,” “expectations,” and “boundaries” around that idol.

So when someone accidentally crosses this invisible perimeter, our reaction is outsized. It is the panic of a sentry who hears a twig snap in the dark and fires in every direction just to drown out his own fear.

It is the panic of a decorator whose curtain is about to be torn down. Because if anyone peeks behind that glittering sign, they’ll find no treasure vault there — only the same wild, unmapped landscape we’ve been so desperate to pave over.