I Think I’d Choose My Life Again

Last year I was on the phone with my friend Haven, complaining about my life…something about how it w unfair that I was brought into this world without my consent.

“And like, I didn’t even ask to be here! And now I’m stuck here having to work to pay rent and buy food and get shitty healthcare. You know? Isn’t it ironic that it’s illegal to kill myself, but I didn’t even choose to be alive in the first place?”

“Hmmm,” Haven considered. “But, I think I did choose to be here.”

I paused, confused. “Uh…what do you mean? How could you do that?”

“Well, I think that maybe before I came to Earth my spirit was given the option to come have the human experience. I didn’t have to say yes, but I think I would choose it if given that chance.”

My first thought was, “well that’s ridiculous,” but I didn’t say so. I stood in my room, stunned to silence at such a whimsical but pleasant possibility of a Self before Haven’s life on Earth; one that could choose to live an imperfect human life for the sake of the experience.

“Wow,” I considered. “That’s…actually a pretty empowering idea. It removes the responsibility of your life from your parents, and gives it back to you.”

“Yes, exactly,” they agreed. “And isn’t it more helpful and positive for me to behave as though this life is something that I wanted to come here to live out, despite the cost of living and the shitty healthcare? How does it serve anybody to view their life as something that they were powerless to choose and cannot end?”

Suddenly I felt embarrassed for complaining about being brought into the world. Yes, life is hard. But hard doesn’t automatically mean bad. Do people not grow the most when they overcome challenges? Do we not more deeply experience joy when we understand the depths of grief?

It made me wonder, if I was a spirit floating through space outside the dimension of time, and a powerful entity came to me and said, “Hey Spirit, you can keep on floating through space if you want, but there’s a human body on Earth about to be born if you want to inhabit it and experience her life. It might be a really hard life, but you’ll get to see the beauty of the planet and experience the spectrum of human emotions while you’re there. You want to try it out?”

Dude, I know I would say hell yes. Maybe even HELL YES! My life has been full of painful experiences and difficult challenges, but they have been outshined by beautiful people and abundant love. Life is not all good or all bad, it’s a balance of both, and it is that balance of both that is the human experience. I often wonder if feeling the full spectrum of possible emotion is—dare I say?—the point. Heartbreak has allowed me to appreciate the full beauty of falling in love. Feeling deep loneliness has contextualized the significance of sincere friendship. Without these painful memories, I’d take what I have now for granted; therefore, I feel gratefulness for my past. Not only does it show me how far I have come, but it is proof that I can overcome anything else in the future.

You might be reading this thinking, “That’s nice, but it’s not true. I can’t act like I chose my life when I actually didn’t.”

But how do you know? If you believe you are more than a brain existing inside a meat-suit, tell me how you know that your Self sparked into existence after your parents had sex? Can we scientifically know?

I don’t think we can. And for the things we can’t truly know, I think it’s okay to fill in the blanks with what is most helpful for our existence now. Our imaginations can be used as tools to improve our experiences. Blaming my existence on my parents choosing life for me made me feel powerless and resentful. It was a mental roadblock for me. Imagining instead that I made the choice to be here despite the challenges of our flawed existence gives me agency over my life now, and I feel at peace with the fact that while my life is sometimes hard, I have the gift of the human experience. I think that I even like who I am becoming.

I chose to be here. I am grateful for the opportunity to be here. Each challenge that I overcome is a level up in the game. However you choose to contextualize your life, I encourage you to choose a mindset that helps you while you are here.