The unlived book

Imagine if every person was born with a book. Not a magical book that predicted the future or a book that tells you what to do. But a book that recorded every version of yourself that never became. Every choice that you did not make and every road that you did not take and about every life that almost happened.

Most people would spend their whole life reading it. They will be curious and obsessed and wondering.

In page 47 you might discover a self that movies to another city or on page 112 the version who persuaded art instead of engineering. On page 289 the version who said yes when you said no. Thousands upon thousands of alternative lives. All existing only in ink. At first it would be fascinating.

You could compare and analyse and you would consider and question everything. What if I had worked harder and what if I had been braver and what if I had stayed.

But eventually I think the book would become dangerous. Because comparison has a way of turning possibilities into regrets. You would read about the version of yourself who wildly became successful and wonder why you did not and you would read about the version who never failed that mistake. And slowly without realising it you might start to mourn the life you never lived and never existed.

I think we already do this not with books but with our imagination. We carry entire ghost versions of ourselves everywhere.

The athelete that we could have been and the musician we never became and the entrepreneur who could have started the company and the person who was almost chosen and the relationship that almost happened and the oppertunity that has almost worked out.

Sometimes whose ghosted sit beside us at night and quietly asking questions like What if....It is such a small question try it makes a enormous space inside a person.

The truth is every choice costs something. Every path closed another.

You cannot become everything and you cannot live every possible life. No matter how carefully you choose there will always be version of yourself you left behind. Dreams that never happen and doors that never open. Storied that never get written and perhaps that is okay.

Because imagine trying to carry every possible life at once. Imagine trying to be every version of yourself simultaneously. The artist or the the doctor or the traveller it the athlete or the scholar or the adventure.

Glu would be streched so thin you might never truly become anyone at all. May be the beauty of life is not that we get every possibility. May be the beauty is that we get one. One imperfect life and one collection of choices. One story that belings entirely to us.

Not because it is the best story. Not because it is not he happiest. But because it is ours. If I were given that book today I think I would read a few pages .

I would smile at some and cry at others and wonder about many. The. I would close it. Not because the other lives don't matter bc they are not the life that is currently happening.