As humans, we possess a rare capacity: the ability to reflect on ourselves, to question our existence, to create meaning, and to build entire belief systems around a single question: why? But what if this gift is also a burden?

After several heavy episodes, I step back to ask whether we might be too self-aware for our own good. Drawing on the bleak and provocative reflections of Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa and Norwegian philosopher Peter Wessel Zapffe, we confront an unsettling possibility: that our capacity for self-reflection is not only a source of suffering, but, if taken to its extreme, a reason some have argued humanity should not continue at all...