The thing about our unlived lives
Dating app wisdom, detours and daily things
Sometimes, as Jonathan Safran Foer wrote, “I can feel my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I’m not living.”
But lately, I’ve wondered if contemplating our unlived lives can be a source of reassurance rather than strain.
I’ve often wished it were possible to meet the version of myself who chose differently. That way, I could compare my current life with that other version and see all those times a hard decision, a certain sacrifice, or loss actually turned out for the best.
This lens for our unlived lives brings a sense of trust and comfort—as the saying goes, “If it’s meant for you, it will find you.”
Beyond the platitude, perhaps finding acceptance in our current life comes from recognising that this is our only life.
As the anthropologist Clifford Geertz wrote: “One of the most significant facts about humanity may finally be that we all begin with the natural equipment to live a thousand kinds of life but end in the end having lived only one.”
Instead of feeling deflated by the “thousands of lives we could have lived”—not to mention stifled when trying to decide between them—we can see them as simple fantasies and accept the isness of our life.
When we recognise we don’t have as much control over the outcome of choices as we might think, we see how many things are simply half-chance anyway.
If this life is what it is, wouldn’t it serve us to assume that we made the best decision we could at the time? That even if things haven’t unfolded as we’d hoped, we’ve learned something valuable? That maybe, this life is turning out exactly as it should?
The Road to Wisdom
by Piet Hein
The road to wisdom?—Well, it’s
plain and simple to express:
Err
and err
and err again,
but less
and less
and less.
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Collected life advice from a dating app
Lessons on embracing detours
And a new word for taking the tiniest step…
