In dis-praise of folly

I have, or currently am, living the life, that psychoanalyst and prolific writer, Adam Phillips, recommend we live without further ado.

Phillips says, like fools, we inevitably end up living two lives, one that we fantasize about, the life that could've been and should've been had not we fallen through the cracks of fate and our own missteps, and the life that we actually living.

It's best and in our very own psychic interest of were to live the one life--one that we are living.

As I was saying, I am living the one life I am. No fantasy parallel life or a moaning for one I could've lived, for me.

In 2000, I got a fabulous scholarship to attend a Summer Institute at Cornell University; it was a rare opportunity to study under the tutelage of Hayden White. However, on account of personal reasons, I couldn't follow through. I was in remorse for a long time. For a long time I thought of what could've been had I followed through and actualized the chance that came my way.

Over time, having lived the life I have been graciously granted by fate, I have whipped me psychically into shape, or have tried to do so. I suffer little in the way of pining away for lost chances, because I remember always that the life that beckoned me away from those so-called "golden opportunities" was the real life I was scheduled to live.

In 2000, the one thing that required me to sacrifice the "golden opportunity" was something real and compelling. The "golden opportunity" was just another chance that didn't unfold, nor was it meant to unfold. In hindsight, it looks neither golden, nor worthy of being pined for.

Adam Phillip begins Missing Out: In Praise of the Unlived Life with 

The unexamined life is surely worth living, but is the unlived life worth examining?

His answer is a "no."

Phillips writes heretically against the modern notion that we should all be out there fulfilling our potential. Instead of feeling that we should have a "better" life, he says, we should just live, as gratifyingly as possible, the life we have. Otherwise, we are setting ourselves up for bitterness. What makes us think that we could have been a contender? Yet, in the dark of night, alone, we do think this and grieve that it wasn't possible. 

And what was not possible becomes the story of our lives [...] Our lived lives might become a protracted mourning for, or an endless trauma about, the lives we were unable to live.