For most of your life, attention has lived somewhere other than here. In the past, replaying. In the future, bracing. Scheduling, rehearsing, worrying. The chatter rarely stops. The two halves of the brain fall out of step. You can know, consciously, that things should feel different — and still feel nothing change.

And underneath it, a quieter ache: the sense that there is an explanation no one ever handed you. A connection you could never quite reach.