other lives

the constant battle of living life on a human scale

“An ability to tolerate the anxiety generated by ambiguity is what allows us to respect, engage, and grow from our repeated, daily encounters with the essential mysteries of life. But the payoff goes even further. Certainty begets stagnation, but ambiguity pulls us deeper into life. Unchallenged conviction begets rigidity, which begets regression;

Molly Simpson added 2mo

Molly Simpson added 3mo

artist a subtle space

You could theoretically change your life at any moment. Move here, date that person, work on that startup, write that blog, dye your hair, adopt a dog. Should I stay, should I go? I don’t know if this agency is freedom or burden. Perhaps all the best things are both.

Nix

twitter.com

Molly Simpson added 3mo

I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in my life. And I am horribly limited.

Sylvia Plath

Molly Simpson added 3mo

Molly Simpson added 4mo

The fact that we are alive in this moment, out of all the moments that have ever existed, entitles us with a certain awe and obligation. As I commit to keeping going, I am saying that I don’t know how my future self will feel, and I owe it to that person to wait and see.

Molly Simpson added 4mo

via Carissa Potter

To enjoy life, we might have to stop thinking about what we will never be able to read and watch and say and do, and start to think of how to enjoy the world within our boundaries. To live on a human scale. To focus on the few things we can do, rather than the millions of things we can’t. To not crave parallel lives. To find a smaller mathematics.

Molly Simpson added 4mo

If grief is love with nowhere to go, I am full of it. Still, I am not sure I want to have a child. My downfall is that I want to live all lives in one, and soon I have to choose one.

Molly Simpson added 4mo

via METAXU

One time my friend Matt called me and started telling me in detail about a venture to the grocery store - he had just gone in for almond milk, and left with 20 other things, knocked something over, ran into someone he knew, and also left without getting almond milk. Then he said, “Oh god this is the most boring story in the world - basically what I’m saying is I didn’t have a smoothie today because I forgot to get almond milk at the store, the end!” We had a laugh, and then I said, “I love you so I care about everything about you! I want to know about crashing your cart into the busy woman and knocking over the tower of apples. I want to know about the almond milk for your smoothie.” Now I am in this weird limbo stage right now where a lot is changing and nothing is happening and I’m waiting and trying to take action and haven’t decided on anything, and I don’t know how to talk through any of that. The big stuff feels too orb-y, too intangible to even begin. So the way I’m able to connect right now is in the little things. We show each other we love each other by reaching out, talking about the angst, not talking about the angst. Sharing a dog video. Asking for an opinion on mascara that’s been sitting in an online shopping cart for two weeks. Intimacy is knowing about the almond milk.

instagram.com

Molly Simpson added 5mo

Intimacy is knowing about the almond milk

Dreamy But Disconnected

open.substack.com

Molly Simpson added 5mo

There are the different versions of ourselves, the different lives we have lived, and perhaps even more dangerous, the ones we could have lived. The ones we feel bittersweet over having not pursued, the ones we could see ourselves in, if only just a few choices had been made differently. We wonder where the assorted paths would have led, dream about the hypothetical different realities other than our current one. For me, it’s not so much FOMO as it is feeling like there’s another version of myself out there which I may have abandoned.

Of course it’s a luxury to feel this way, to be able to choose where you live, what jobs you take. But there’s also something to feeling pulled to different realities, to feeling in-between. If you don’t tend to those sides of yourself, they easily feel like they’re disintegrating—firm ground eroding beneath your feet.

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