The lives that weren't meant for me

I will never not be me, and neither will you

Rodrigo Rivera

Isn’t it kind of weird how we only ever get one life? Like, actually ever? Like—you’re never going to get to do this again until the end of time—ever?

Now, not to get too existential on you, I’m kind of okay with the mortality part—seeing that I’m a believer in the whole “the limited nature of life is what gives it meaning” line of thought. You see, I’m not here to repeat what many have already said, probably better than I could have. I’m here to make you think of the limitations that come with only ever being able to be one person.

For example, have you ever stopped to think about just how cool talents are? Like, out of random chance, we are all blessed with this random assortment of abilities and skills that we are just better at than most people. Isn’t that amazing? You may be really good at mental math, or throwing a ball with precision, or talking in front of many people, and while, yeah, you probably have put in the work it takes to get that good at it, you didn’t exactly choose your talents; they were given to you.

Except, not exactly. Or at least not the way many like to simplify it. The thing is, while we're not entirely blank canvases when we're born—our genetics do differ after all, granting us some natural advantages—we ARE still very influenceable by our upbringing. This is where the real element of luck comes into play.

Think about it, you could have been a million people. Just imagine if your greatest passions were never introduced to you. Who would you be? An aimless husk, wondering why you’ve never liked anything? No, you would have likely found other passions. Really, talent is mostly a result of you being more passionate than average about the things that stuck with you growing up.

That means that interests are the real culprits for making us into who we are. And yet, we can only afford to have so many interests… because we can’t really devote 10 hours into all of them every single week. We’d run out of time!

My point is that the uniqueness of each of our lives is determined not only by pure chance—due to what our families, cultures, communities, and even time-period were able to show us—but also by the active choice to pursue certain paths out of our given array of possibilities. Meaning that, even if you were set up—skills and opportunities-wise—for multiple paths, you can only ever take one of them, even if you would have excelled at multiple.

And isn’t that a shame? Don’t you ever wish you had been talented at something you’re not? That you looked a different way? That you were given an opportunity someone else was given? That your childhood was different? Or that your life had turned out a different way?

Why do our brains even bother making us feel like that? Can’t they understand that we will never not be us? That it is deeply irrational to wish for something that can never be true? That even if we got what we wanted, we would always want something else?

These days, I mostly think it’s cool that people are really good at the things I suck at, and that they’ve gotten to live through the many things I haven’t, and perhaps never will. Still, the wandering thought of “it’d be nice to have that talent, that experience” persists. I know what you’re thinking, and yes, if I want a skill or an experience that bad, I can always try my best and still pursue it, but even then it’s not quite the same. 

What if I wish to have dreams that I currently don’t? What if I long for the lives I don’t even know I want? I love my current life, but what if I think life is so beautiful that I want to experience more of it than what would reasonably fit in just one lifetime?

Some opportunities I find will never apply to me, either because I’m not a U.S. citizen, or a certain ethnicity, or have certain lived-experience. I will never get to fully experience the cultures I wasn’t born into, the languages I’ll never speak, and the interests I’ll never have. We’ll never experience 99.99% of what this life has to offer, and that’s just something we all need to live with. 

And it’s beautiful!! Because only WE get to ever be us, and hopefully you love being you. Because we can’t really help it. We can only wonder…