What's a life well lived?

Hello friends,

My favourite conversations are the ones where I don’t have to talk about myself and I can just ask questions and let people tell me all their secrets.

It’s probably why I became a coach.

But it makes writing emails awfully hard. I have to talk. I have to tell you things about myself. It’s probably my most uncomfortable state.

But if you and I were to sit down and have a really deep conversation, and I had to share something honest and true, I’d confess to you that mortality has been on my mind a fair bit lately.

Not in a particularly morbid way. But just in a way that it’s a thing lingering at the edges, being an ever present reminder that life is finite and one day will be over.

But it’s not even about death at all.

It’s actually because I’m so fucking happy with my life. And as a result it feels more precious than ever. And so, I can sometimes hyperfixate on the fact that it will end one day.

I don’t know why I do this. And I’ve been trying to understand this part of myself for years.

I sometimes think that I just don’t let myself be happy. Like my brain has a threshold for how happy I can be, and whenever I surpass it, it reminds me about the climate crisis, or the mountain of credit card debt I have and what a disappointment that would be to my Dad, or about the fact I and everyone I love will die one day and this will all be gone.

I sometimes think I just have a deep need to control everything. And part of that control is managing expectations and future risk. Things going good feels like climbing higher and higher on rickety staircase, knowing that the higher you get the worse the fall will be. And so you have to keep focused on the risks and the ways things that could go wrong, because that feels like the only way to stay safe. (It’s not.)

And sometimes I just think that I deeply love living and being part of all that life has to offer and it simply makes me sad to think about not getting to exist anymore.

When I was in the midst of questioning my sexuality, and really thinking about whether or not to talk to my then husband about it, one of the things that played a lot on my mind was thinking about the story of my life. Was I really going to live my whole life never getting to know what it would be like to embrace this part of myself? I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t bare the thought of lying on my death bed and having that as a regret. I know that’s morbid, and I know it’s also cliche, but we really do have just one wild and precious life, one chance to write this story. I try not to focus too often on all the things that will be left out of my story — I will probably never get to be best friends with an elephant or walk on the moon or explore jungles and see the archaeological wonders of this world. I’m okay with all the those things. But if I had missed out on the chance to have a love so amazing that it makes me feel like my heart is going to burst out of my chest? That would have been a tragedy.

I just want to be the most me I can be. That’s my life well lived.

And so maybe the thoughts about mortality are just a gentle reminder of that. Little nudges to keep being present, keep being me, keeping loving wholeheartedly, keep being curious, and most of all to keep that feeling of aliveness at the centre of everything I do.

Life is precious and fragile and it will end, but we can’t control that. All we can control is how we show up for it.

Keep well and talk soon,

Joeli