Imagine missing out on life because you thought there was only one right way to live it
Letting go of the idea that there's a correct answer waiting somewhere
If you ask a maps app how to get from A to B, it will always hand you the fastest route. It doesn’t matter if you want a more scenic one or the one through the neighbourhood you’ve never explored, or even the one that lets you sit on the train without changing twice and just read in peace - it’s always the fastest one, because it was trained to optimise for speed.
It really reminds me of the same map for the entire life that we’ve been handed and told that there was only one correct way to get through it:
〰️ Go to school 〰️ Get the degree 〰️ Get the job 〰️ Get married 〰️ Have kids 〰️ Work the same place for decades 〰️ Retire 〰️ Die
Our parents and grandparents mostly subscribed to that route, and for good reason; it made sense for their time and offered security. But I think we’re at a point now where we actually get to think for ourselves a bit. There’s finally some breathing room to engage with life instead of fighting it the whole way through.
The more you fight, the more you lose
I don’t want to convince anyone to torch their life and go live in a cave in a rainforest somewhere. If anything, I’m going back to a 9-5 next week, which was very much not the plan six months ago.
For a while I fought that idea properly because it felt like admitting that I couldn’t make it on my own, like proof I’d picked the wrong lane. I had to start asking a different question because I was driving myself insane while watching my savings plummet below zero. What if this isn’t a wrong turn at all? What if it’s just a detour that gets me closer to some of my actual goals, and funds the things I’m building on the side?
Yes, it’s not how I imagined it, but:
a. it’s not forever
b. it will accelerate things
c. maybe it will actually be nice
Choosing to see it as an adventure instead of an inconvenience has genuinely changed how the last few weeks have felt, because I don’t actually know where this detour leads yet, and I’ve decided that not knowing is allowed to feel exciting instead of just unsettling.
There’s more than one way to do things right
It feels like the travelling metaphor is a bit overused but I think it’s a perfect illustration of this idea.
A few years ago, on a road trip around Turkey, my friend and I got so hungry at one point that, against any logical sense whatsoever, we decided to eat at a petrol station. To this day we still talk about those koftas being the best either of us has ever had just because we were open enough, hungry enough, unplanned enough, to let the moment offer us something we never would have booked in advance.
And on another road trip, this time around France, we got lost without signal and ended up in the cutest village in Provence that was way off our original route. Inconvenience? Maybe. Incredible experience? Yes. Treasured memory? Absolutely.
Floating instead of fighting
There’s this idea in Taoism wu wei (無為), which translates roughly to “non-action” or “effortless action”. It doesn’t mean being passive in life but rather acting in harmony with it. Like swimming down the river instead of paddling upstream. I think about that a lot now, because committing to only one lane, one job, one plan, one identity, and defending it no matter what and not allowing any other possibility in, is actually a form of fighting upstream.
If that one lane happens to work out, brilliant, you are lucky and well done you. But if it doesn’t, you are gripping onto something that is not going your way. And the grip is what actually hurts.
I’m not going to argue - letting go of an idea or a dream can be just as painful. But it doesn’t mean that there’s nothing else there that can help you live a beautiful, inspired, interesting life.
You never know what life has in store - and that’s the beauty of it
I believe that life is meant to be lived and enjoyed, not to be powered through. So maybe the invitation here is to unclench a little.
When you loosen your grip on how you THINK things are supposed to go, you start noticing things you’d have walked straight past otherwise - opportunities, conversations, people, ideas, whole detours that turn out to be exactly what you needed, even though they looked nothing like the plan.
This is just an invitation to let the possibility of something better exist out there, even when, ESPECIALLY when, it doesn’t match the version you’d already pictured for yourself.
Thank you for reading!
