on "maybe in another universe"-ing your way out of life
[Cross-posted from Substack. This is the only time I'll do so, but I've been meaning to experiment with longer-form essays and thought I'd share here.]
I’ve been trying not to “maybe in another universe” my way out of the things that, deep down, I know I want. The signature trick of self-betrayal, the most sophisticated form of self-sabotage: outsmarting my longing by professing it belongs to some other timeline, an alternate version of myself who had more courage, resources, and the “permission” to be who I want. It starts with I wish I had more time to maybe that life just isn’t for me.
What you repress doesn’t die. I believe it waits, tenaciously reintroducing itself until you stop pretending you don’t recognize it: in dreams, chance conversations, random Instagram posts of people living your dreams. You can disguise this desire under “practical decisions” or “realistic thinking,” but that often transforms into restlessness, duplicitous irritation, and the strange sense of being misaligned even when nothing in your life is technically off. Yes, you study for a secure future or work your 9-5 and make good money, yet why do you feel misaligned?
The world is full of people suffering from the consequences of an unlived life. It can be seen from their cruel cynicism, the elusive resentment towards those chose differently. They are not actually angry at others; they are orbiting the grief of ceaselessly betraying their inner potential. I know that. I’ve been the bitter person (I write from this difficult, transitional space between bitterness and becoming. A lot of my writing is not merely insight for others but a wake-up call for myself, too).
I was always fascinated by the concept jealousy, and its quintessential association as a “negative” human emotion. It took years of counseling, reading, and uncomfortable self-honesty to realize that my envy of creatives I admired online — writers, artists, people building meaningful things — didn’t originate from hate. It was recognition, recognizing something of myself in them that, for some reason, I refused to animate. Instead of doing the work, I drowned myself in overconsumption (i.e. scroll, admire, repeat), convincing myself that passive familiarity with a world was the same as inhabiting it. It’s not. Dopamine can emulate excitement, but it cannot substitute for aliveness.
So what is jealousy, if not misdirected energy? In Shadow and Evil in Fairy Tales, analyst Marie-Louise von Franz delineates this misdirection of energy from suppressed creative drive. “People who have a creative side and do not live it out are most disagreeable. They make a mountain out of a molehill, fuss about unnecessary things . . . There is a kind of floating charge of energy in them which is not attached to its right object and therefore tends to apply exaggerated dynamism to the wrong situation.” That’s the damaging psychology of suppressed calling, that energy doesn’t disappear but corrodes in place.
Ideas are abundant, so are intelligence and talent. Courage, though, is scarce. When I talk about courage, I don’t mean grand gestures and cinematic leaps but the quiet, persistent refusal to outsource our life to imaginary version that will never exist. It is the courage to admit what you want without diluting it into social acceptance. What you want is not waiting for permission. It’s waiting for a decision.