Right now, I’m living in a sparse place. Moved here a few weeks ago. I don’t have much furniture yet. There are no pictures on the wall, besides the butt-ugly ones the previous tenant left. I don’t have people over often. There’s no wifi yet. It doesn’t feel like home yet.
I feel like once I have wifi, once I’ve got my place exactly as I want it, I’ll feel at home here, feel like my life really begins because I can finally host dinner parties or whatever.
It’s fascinating how our minds convince us that we just need this one thing to happen and then life really starts. Right now, we’re living practice life. It’s the dress rehearsal before the real one!
Everyone feels that way sometimes. There’s always a next thing that’ll finally unlock what we’ve always wanted. But I felt the same way before I moved here.
When I get my own place, then life really begins. Right now, in this co-living place, I’m not living real life—I’m just practicing for the real life that comes when I have my own place.
Now I have my own place and think real life begins when it’s fully furnished. Then I’ll think real life begins when I’m in a relationship again. Or something else.
But I’d do well to remember Oliver Burkeman’s 4000 Weeks. Every second is the same in the sense that it’s a dead second the moment we experience it. A second we’re closer to the inevitable end—death.
You can’t get your time refunded because it was boring or because you lacked pictures on the walls.
This insight sounds scary at first, but it’s one of those realities we have no alternatives but to deal with. We can only make the best of it.
What that looks like depends on you.