Dear Fellow Mortals,
Most of us carry around a few lives we never lived. The job we turned down. The city we almost moved to. The person we might have married, the degree we never finished, and the version of ourselves who said yes when we said no.
We rarely think about them on purpose.
They tend to show up on hard days, and when they do, they almost always look better than the life we have.
The School for Mortals
Limits, tensions, and choices shape a finite life. The School for Mortals invites us to learn how to live well within them. It’s available exclusively to members: If you’re not already one, you can become a member, join at 50% off, or, if cost is a barrier, accept a complimentary membership.
“Every Yes Is a No”
Early Audio from Think Like a Mortal
There’s a reason for that. In the chapter you’re about to hear, I put it this way:
A possibility is not yet a life. The imagined career contains no tedious meetings. The imagined city has no traffic, loneliness, or bad weather. The imagined relationship has never endured an argument, illness, financial strain, or the ordinary disappointment of discovering that another person is not the person we invented in advance.
The life we chose has to pay its bills. The ones we didn’t choose never get the invoice. As the chapter says, “Possibility retains the privilege of perfection.”
“Every Yes Is a No” begins with a philosopher who knew this from the inside. In 1840, Søren Kierkegaard became engaged to Regine Olsen in Copenhagen. A year later, he broke it off. He continued to think about her long after the decision could be undone. In the years that followed, he wrote Either/Or and The Concept of Anxiety, where he describes anxiety as “the dizziness of freedom.” Biographers still argue about why he ended the engagement. I’m less interested in whether he chose rightly than in the fact that the great philosopher of choice did not escape what choosing costs.
That cost is the subject of the chapter.
Every serious yes contains a no.
