could have been me

taste love and pain. feel pride and shame.

if i had a quarter for the number of times people told me “you’ve lost it” i would have probably like 150 quarters. which in hindsight isn’t that much money but is a lot of times. i go out every friday, i thoroughly enjoy it, and i do it again the next day. i’m still talking to someone i probably shouldn’t be talking to. i’ve gotten into countless arguments with my little brother who’s 7 years younger than me. and im considering starting my love life over with women. yeah i have lost it and this post is my attempt to justify it.

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i was just trying to explain to someone what it feels like to be drunk because they hadn’t destroyed their liver yet and i surprisingly struggled a lot to find the right words to explain it. on the spot i said “oh you just get super dizzy and you have no idea what you’re doing” but what i wanted to say was:

it feels like there’s a certain magic to the night and it comes with an unspoken invitation that whispers “hey come live when you can.¹”

okay and maybe that sounds a little emo. but that’s really what it is. the world slows down, the distractions all fade, the clock ticks a little softer, and all you want to do is dance and sing your heart out. i’m not saying everyone should be an alcoholic but its those moments where i repeatedly realize that life isn’t just about the hours on a clock.

because realistically we’ll be 60 years old probably at a small house in wyoming wishing we could party until 4am, dance until dawn, fall in love, get in a car and drive and drive and drive at midnight, make friends with a random stranger on the green line and never talk to them again, go on road trips with 15 cents in your bank account, wear big shirts over tiny bikinis, eat the food you’ve always said no to, and look at the stars and cry like there’s no tomorrow. because in those moments it felt like tomorrow didn’t matter— only now did.

and that’s where the magic really is isn’t it? in the spontanteous, in the imperfect, in the reckless abandon of chasing moments for no other reason than the fact that they make you feel alive. like the time i sat by the sailing pavilion right across from hayden watching the sunset on a tuesday night, talking about everything and nothing with someone i barely knew, and yet that conversation became one of the most important i’ve ever had. one about raising a family and creating a future for myself. it wasn’t planned. it wasn’t polished, it was real. it was life, raw and unfiltered, exactly as it’s meant to be.

i live in constant fear that i’m not living correctly. and i occasionally struggle to find a reason for life (which is not okay i know). days seem repetitive and never perfect. especially when i’ve learned to equate perfection to success my whole life. especially at mit, where everyone’s lives are color-coded on google calendar and productivity feels like a drug. everyone says life isn’t about checking boxes, but we’re all out here doing exactly that: hour by hour, minute by minute.

what if we’re all just missing the point? what if the correct way to live isn’t about finding the right path but about wandering off of it? what if it’s not the 5th floor of stud on sunday morning because of impending hangxiety? i think about the pressure to make every day “productive” and to optimize every hour of our lives. living to work is the biggest lie we’ve been sold. everyone needs to stop glamorizing the grind and instead start glamorizing living.

like what about the parts of life that can’t be measured? the feelings? the freedom? what if the best use of our time is just being? because somewhere along the way i think we’ve lost the ability to just be. to sit with ourselves, with our thoughts, and with the people we love, and to experience life without constantly thinking about the next thing we have to do and the next milestone we have to reach.

we really do overthink life, all of us. we get caught up in the “what ifs” and the “should i’s” instead of just doing. but its in that doing— in throwing caution to the wind— that we find some of the best parts of life. the ones that we’ll actually look back on one day and realize were the moments that made us feel the most alive. there is absolutely no way life is perfectly mapped out days. it’s in the moments that surprise.

the quiet walks alone with “taylor swift but just her fall music” playing in my ears, the marijuana-driven substack articles², the unrequited love, the seconds of pure silence where everything feels super heavy and light at the same time. the most important moments aren’t always announced with flashing lights and fireworks; sometimes, it’s the smallest things that change your perspective in the biggest way.

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someone recently told me that our brains were meant for everything EXCEPT what we’re doing right now. we evolved with anxiety as an emotion because of predators and hunting and gathering, not because of a thermo pset. the earth was created for us to live and to breathe deeply and feel the rain on our skins and run barefoot on a beach. it was not made for the corporate world.

and i’ve been thinking way too much about that— about how disconnected we’ve become from what life really is about. we sit in classrooms staring at canvas and blackboards, stressing over deadlines, and all the while, there’s probably a tiger planning how it’s going to catch its prey, a bird eating out of someone’s birdhouse, and the world outside keeps moving. we get so caught up in the right college, the right internship, the right summer plans, the right job, the right choices. at the end of the day, we’re a speck of dust on this planet. there’s so many bigger things we’re missing.

when was the last time you laid in the grass and felt the actual earth beneath you? when was the last time you stood in the ocean and let the waves knock you off balance? we were made for moments like that. our entire species was. it’s about living when it doesn’t matter vs. when it does. when we’re free to be reckless, to not know what’s coming next, to not care what’s coming next.

i’m learning that there’s a freedom in letting go of the need to control every aspect of life.

maybe life isn’t about knowing the answers. maybe it’s about asking the questions and being okay with the fact that we might never ever find them.

and one day none of this shit will matter the way we think it does now. it won’t matter if we end up at a perfect school or if we work for jane street. i sometimes get rlly stressed out because i think we have to have everything figured out right now and it seems like everyone around me knows exactly what they’re doing with themselves. but im convinced that nobody knows and that’s the point. life is about finding out as we go— the nights we drank too much, the relationships that burned too bright and too fast. what is actually going to matter are the nights we stayed up until sunrise talking about life, laughing until our sides hurt, times we took off with no destinantion, no plan, just the open road and maybe dancing queen playing in the background.

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i think about the people i’ve met along the way— the ones who came into my life for just a moment but left a lasting mark. the ones that make me, me and that reminded me that living is about feeling— the good, the bad, the confusing, the exhilarating.

so then i went back to my existential questions: what is the point of life?

life is meant to be lived.

really lived.

not just in the safe, predictable ways but in the messy, wild, primal moments that leave us breathless. we weren’t put on this plane and we didn’t evolve just to go through the motions and to follow some path that someone else set for us. we’re here to feel everything. to be reckless and find out who we are along the way. we’re supposed to be scared of the world because that’s how we know we’re alive.

there’s something about being young that makes you think that we’ve got all the time in the world. like, we’ll figure everything out eventually, chase our dreams later, do some crazy shit when we’re older. but in reality, one day we’re gonna wake up and we’ll be older. we’re gonna wake up and realized time slipped by while we were worrying about all the wrong things and sopped caring so damn much about what’s “supposed to happen next.”

so stop waiting for everything to line up perfectly. don’t tell yourself you’ll do it later. there is no later. there’s only now. this moment, this night, this year— all of it is yours. you don’t need a plan. you don’t need permission. you just need to live like you’ve got nothing to lose, because one you day, you’re gonna realize you actually do not.

we’re so hard on ourselves.

we spend so much time thinking we don’t deserve the good things, the joy, the freedom to mess up, to be human. we deserve to live.

one day, we’ll look back at these 4 years where we met our best friends and we’re either going to smile because we lived the hell out of them or we’re gonna regret not doing more. and i don’t know about you, but i’d rather have a million messy beautiful reckless memories than a single regret about playing it safe. we’ll think about the nights we could have stayed out later, danced harder, laughed louder. all the times we could have held someone close and said, “i love you” but didn’t because we thought we’d have time. but time doesn’t care about our plans. it moves and it takes everything with it. you’re going to wish you could go back to these exact moments— the ones you’re living today— and you’ll realize you can’t rewind.

because you can’t undo the choices you didn’t make.

i want to look back and know that i’ve lived a life so full that it nearly broke me and i want to know i felt everything. fell tf apart and put myself tf back together. and i want the world to know that i was brave enough to live.

the night is still so young, and so are you. go chase the stars, run barefoot, take the shot, rip the pen, fall in love with the world, talk to strangers, buy a 20 piece of bbq chicken wings, dance by the charles, eat a mango in the shower so you don’t have to worry about it dripping down your chin, and live without regrets. those memories will be the stories you tell, the people that make up every part of you, the moments you miss, and the pieces of life you’re forever grateful for.

“you’re on your own kid, you always have been” - taylor swift

live so deeply that when it’s all said and done, the only thing you’ll regret is that it had to end. because in the end, it’s not the things we planned that we remember—it’s the things we felt.

we’ll all be left with the life we lived. or the one we didn’t.

a series of two texts that probably saved my life and hopefully will save yours too because everybody deserve to see this.

1. do me a favor and put that playlist on shuffle while you read this, you won’t regret it

2. yes, this is one.