Episode 235 - You Don't Need to Live the Life You Didn't Choose

Hi I'm Keith and welcome to Lighter than You Started. It's Sunday and today I'd like to talk about a life you may occasionally visit. Not the life you're living. Another one. The life where you took the other job.

Moved to the other town. Said yes instead of no. Said no instead of yes. Stayed. Left.

Started earlier, waited longer. Perhaps you've visited that life yourself usually in our imagination. We wonder what would have happened if I'd chosen differently. It's such a human question. Our lives are shaped by thousands of choices some enormous most surprisingly small and every time we choose one road there are others we don't take.

It's natural to wonder where those roads might have led. The interesting thing is the lives we didn't choose have one considerable advantage over the one we're actually living. We get to imagine them. An imagination can be a very generous editor. The job we didn't take doesn't have the difficult Monday mornings.

The house we didn't buy never needs a new boiler. The relationship that didn't happen contains none of the disagreements that real relationships inevitably do. The business we didn't start never had a difficult month. The other road remains beautifully free of potholes because we never traveled far enough along it to discover where they were. Meanwhile the life we did choose has to deal with reality bills mistakes traffic difficult conversations, unexpected Tuesdays, just simply the ordinary messiness of being alive.

So perhaps we're not always making a fair comparison. We're comparing the real life with an edited one. I think there's something important in recognising that because wondering isn't the problem. Sometimes looking back helps us understand ourselves. Sometimes an old choice reminds us how much we've changed and occasionally reflecting on the road not taken to show us something we genuinely want to change now.

But there's a difference between visiting another possibility and trying to live there. We can spend a surprising amount of time mentally inhabiting lives that never happened. If only I'd perhaps I should have imagined where I'd be now if But here's the thing we never get to know. We can imagine. We can speculate.

We can even create wonderfully convincing stories. But we can't know. Because every different choice would have created another set of choices. Another selection of people. Another series of unexpected events.

The road we didn't take wouldn't have remained a single perfect road stretching neatly into the distance. It would have had junctions too. Detours. Slowed path. Wrong turns.

Wonderful surprises. Ordinary afternoons. It would have been a life not a fantasy. And perhaps that's why today isn't really about regret it's about presence. Because whatever choices brought you here, here is where your life is happening.

This Sunday. This room. These people. This cup of coffee. This view from the window.

This version of you. Not the imaginary version who took another road twenty years ago. You right here right now. There's something wonderfully grounding about that. Perhaps we don't have to prove that every choice we made was the right one because honestly that's an impossible standard.

Some choices probably were right. Some we'd make differently now and some only made sense to the person we were at that time and that's allowed. We sometimes judge old decisions using information we only gained afterwards but the person making the choice didn't have today's knowledge. They had what they knew then. They had their circumstances, their hopes, their fears, their understanding of the world and they chose.

The choice became another day then another and eventually it became here. Because of the kindness in allowing the unlived lives to remain unlived. Not because they were necessarily worse. Maybe some things would have been better. Maybe some would have been harder.

We'll never know. But we do know something about this life. We're here for it. We can still shape it. We can still make choices.

We can still change direction. We can still begin things. We can still stop things. We can still surprise ourselves. Your past choices may explain where you're standing but they don't have to dictate where you go next.

And perhaps that's much more useful than trying to discover what would have happened on a road that's no longer available. So today if you find yourself visiting one of those imaginary lives perhaps enjoy the visit. Notice what it tells you. Maybe there's something there that matters. But then come home.

Come back to this life. The imperfect one. The unfinished one. The one containing things you wouldn't have chosen but also containing those things that you wouldn't trade for anything. Because this is a life where you still have choices to make.

This is the road where your next step actually matters. And perhaps we don't need to spend quite so much of today walking through yesterday's imaginary tomorrow. Today's thought for you. You don't need to live the life you didn't choose. Thank you for sharing this moment on a Sunday with me and as always I hope you end today feeling lighter than you started.

Go gently and I'll see you tomorrow on the flip side. Lighter than You Started is a think of something publishing production.