From my balcony, I see an old, fragile woman with a walker.

The first thought that comes up is:

“Oh god, what if one day I will be like that, not able to run and jump and dance and climb anymore, and I realize I haven’t done enough of that!”

There’s instant tension.

A crippling fear of missing out, a sense of future disappointment.

I want to wipe out that experience.

And it’s not the first time.

I have been in this situation many times before.

Thinking about whatever I should be doing instead of what’s happening.

Going fast forward in my mind to a time when I’ll look back with regret.

But no matter how often I have ideas like that, I still get lost in stupid daily stuff.

Why don’t we fully enjoy life if we KNOW how precious and fragile and temporary it is?

Why don’t we use that knowledge to craft something that is blissful and grateful and exciting all the time, so regret will simply have no chance?

Well, because life is not a mathematical equation.

‘Getting everything out of life’ is just an idea, not something we really can or even have to achieve.

If it’s up to the mind, we’ll never ever get enough out of our existence.

But if it’s up to reality, we always do.

There is no unlived life.

There is no life we should have lived.

There is no secret existence we should have discovered if only we worked hard enough, where everything is more exciting than what happened in our actual life.

You can think ‘I should appreciate life more!’ and float on that for a while, feel inspired by it, until something happens and you forget about it.

You can dream about doing crazy stuff, you can think about dancing in the rain, hiking the world with just a smile on your face, having a hundred conversations a day with strangers, or writing the book that will be your legacy.

You can REALLY feel that it’s time to organize life around wonder and exploration.

And, just like that, you can also forget about it, and you will.

Life is not a thing we have to figure out.

It’s not a plan that we can execute perfectly.

We couldn’t even if we wanted to.

If you visit 300 countries, you might still be frustrated about missing the extra one.

If you get a degree, or two degrees, from an Ivy League university, in your mind you could have gotten three, or four.

Whatever you get, there’s always more that you don’t.

There is always something missing.

But whatever that is: it was never really there.

I wrote it yesterday and I will quote it again:

You can’t do life wrong.

There is no finish line where you are confronted with all the things you should have done, neatly recorded for your dubious convenience, and now showing in great detail to frustrate the fuck out of you.

There are no hidden doorways you have to find, no secret levels.

Life is this, it’s what happens now.

Whatever that is.

And sometimes you travel and sometimes you don’t.

Sometimes you really can’t believe why you worry so much about the tiniest, stupidest things, and then, somehow, you start worrying again about the tiniest, stupidest things.

It doesn’t make sense.

It can’t be figured out.

It’s unfolding and EVERYTHING is part of what you get.

The doubts and the successes.

The lack and the abundance.

The fear and the courage.

And all the moments where you seem to be missing out, where you seem to not get everything out of it, where you seem to squander your time on earth while you could have ‘lived it to the fullest!’.

It’s all part of this, and part of the story, your story.

And there’s nothing you can do about it, because everything you CAN do about it, is part of the story anyway.

It will be done.

And what is not done, doesn’t exist and has no real meaning.

You can’t do life wrong.

You obviously can think you do, you can even feel crushed by missed opportunities, but it’s still the only life you can live.

It’s not up to you, and if it feels like it is, that’s because this amazing show is created that way.

Even if the evidence piles up that many of your dreams don’t come true, that a lot of your actions don’t get you where you wanted to go, and that the world seems to do whatever it does all the time, in spite of you, there’s still this sense of ownership.

It’s supposed to feel that way.

Including the insecurity and the frustration about the unlived life.

We will never, ever truly understand the massive scale of this divine operation, but we don’t have to, because we are taken care of just the same.

So worry.

Or don’t.

Feel like you’re missing out.

Or realize that it’s actually impossible.

Seriously: you can’t do it wrong.

So what are you going to do about it?

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(Photo by @anniespratt, for Unsplash)