The Quiet Lives We Never Lived
"The quiet lives we never lived," it's got a ring to it. More often than not I usually find myself thinking about all those other versions of life you and I never got to live. Not the obvious ones but the ones that could have changed the whole trajectory. Let's go through this together dear reader.
See; it's that university that you didn't get to go. That home that you had to move from. The friend whom you never met again after school. The moving abroad decision that you declined. The person who had to cut off their toxic parents. Those people who decided to leave their country and move where no one else knows them. That version of you who decided to take a chance on life again after multiple fails. It is that job that you didn't take. The relationship that never happened. I could keep mentioning all those different cases but in truth I cannot list all. You, my reader, know the different lives you never got to live better than I. Each person having extreme different ones, a few being similar to other people's.
The fascinating thing is that none of these lives actually exist. Yet somehow they continue to occupy a small corner of our minds. We imagine them from time to time. The version of ourselves who moved abroad. The one who stayed. The one who took the job. The one who walked away. The one who tried again after failing. We wonder who they became. Whether they are happier. Whether they regret their choices. Whether they ever think about us the same way we think about them. The truth is, we'll never know. Those lives ended the moment another choice was made. Yet they remain with us, not as realities but as possibilities. To me, this is just a reminder that every life lived comes at the expense of another life unlived. That somewhere within each of us lives a collection of strangers, people we could have been had we chosen differently. We never met them, yet sometimes we miss them.
So what do we do with the unlived lives lingering in our current lives? Because it is not each one of them that stays with us all through. There are those "distinct" ones that do more than just stay, they haunt you. The strangest thing about these unlived lives is that they continue to influence the life we are currently living. Some make us more grateful. Some make us more cautious. Some leave us wondering. Some leave wounds. And some quietly shape our understanding of who we are. The road not taken may no longer exist, but its shadow sometimes walks beside us. Maybe the purpose of these unlived lives was never to be lived in the first place. Maybe they exist to remind us that life could have unfolded differently. That our current reality is neither inevitable nor guaranteed. Every person you meet, every place you call home, every lesson you carry and every scar you bear is the result of countless possibilities falling away so that one life could emerge. This life.
My reader, the goal is not to spend our days mourning the lives we never lived. The goal is to acknowledge them, thank them for what they revealed about us, and gently let them go. The person who moved abroad. The one who stayed. The one who took the risk. The one who walked away. The one who got everything they wanted. The one who lost it all. They all belong to a museum of possibilities that we can visit from time to time, but not a place we can permanently reside in. Because while we sit here wondering about the lives we never got to live, we often forget something equally important: the life we are living right now is itself an unlived life for countless other versions of ourselves. And perhaps, somewhere among those strangers we could have been, there is one looking back at us and thinking, "I'm glad you chose this one."
Tell me, which unlived life visits you the most?
The unlived life of not meeting whatever I cherished back then but I still learn to appreciate what I have and move on.
Linet, I think this is one of the hardest forms of letting go. To acknowledge that there were things we cherished and wished had turned out differently, yet still choose to appreciate what we have and keep moving forward. Thank you for sharing this. There is so much strength and gentleness in that kind of acceptance. 💚 I appreciate you engaging with my blog my girl💙
I’m glad that this piece reminds all of us that our past doesn’t reflect who we are and what we want to be. Most of the time we tend to get confused in making decisions because we are scared that maybe the road we are taking is rough but in the end we come to realise that it was for the best. A very encouraging piece this one. Letting go sometimes is the best favour we do to ourselves.
Thank you for sharing this Candice. I think fear has a way of making us question whether we’re choosing the right path, yet life has a gentle way of revealing that some difficult decisions were for our own good. And I couldn’t agree more; sometimes letting go is not giving up, it’s choosing ourselves and making peace with what is.💚 I appreciate you taking your time time to read the blog😙
Hello Mukami, I have multiple unlived lives! And as much as I try and walk away from those “possibilities” I simply can’t —— because these unlived lives are a haunting reality that I get to see in other people’s lives. It is nearly on a daily basis that I get to see the “person” I could have been or in some cases not been due to the choices I made. When that “person” eerily walks past me, haunting flashes of the critical decisions that were made leading to my current life, come flooding in!
Back in the day, I grew up in a very lively, social and vibrant setting. The dices for me to roll into new “lives” were several. I could have picked up any of those dices—–and boom! Things would have been different from my life today. That setting was so fundamental in its ability to create life-transforming livelihoods. My close friends who we grew up together in that setting, decisively rolled-and-picked different dices. I rolled-and-picked mine and they (my friends) I dare say are “living” my life so to speak. So in as much as we want to walk away from that “life” that could have been, it is not that easy to try and keep it away because ——it pulls up in my drive-way from time-to-time as a haunting reality of what “is” or “isn’t” for me. A broken mirror with hazy images of oneself, super-imposed by the “other self”
That fundamental turning point is the key. It is the boundary of “what is” and “what would have been” Sometimes the choices are good. Sometimes they are catastrophic. But all-in-all, a life must be lived. A life must be embraced. It must be navigated. We are in it for the long-haul and the journey is worth it!
Thank you so much Oliver for taking the time to share this. I found myself reading your response more than once because of how vividly you captured the experience of unlived lives not as abstract possibilities, but as living realities reflected in the people around us. What struck me most was your description of seeing the “person” you could have been in the lives of your friends and peers who rolled different dices. I think that’s perhaps what makes certain unlived lives so difficult to let go of: they are not entirely imaginary. They continue to exist in fragments, in memories, in other people’s journeys, and occasionally in the mirror we hold up to ourselves.
I also appreciate your point about the fundamental turning point—the boundary between “what is” and “what would have been.” We often speak of choices as though they are isolated moments, but in reality, they become the architecture of our entire lives. Some choices reward us, some wound us, and some simply leave us wondering. Yet, as you so beautifully concluded, a life must be lived, embraced, and navigated. Perhaps the goal is not to silence those haunting possibilities, but to acknowledge their presence while continuing to walk our own path with intention and grace.
Thank you for sharing such a personal and profound reflection💙. It adds another layer to the conversation that I hadn’t fully considered when writing the piece.
Lot of questions