There’s a print of a poem on my desk that I bought recently. It reads:
If I had a hundred lives to live
One of them would be on the side of the mountain with sheep and a speckled doe. I’d hunt eggs each morning, knit sweaters made of wool. Or I’d be a man in New York, thighs on the subway spread like a little god. Learn to move through the world without flinching. Or maybe I’d marry myself to a piano, play tunes on the second floor of a townhouse in Prague. Watch all my neighbors dance. Maybe I’d write a book about moonglades or master the soufflé. See opera at the Teatro Colón. Pluck foxgloves on the Western Cape. Or maybe,
I’d hurry back to this life, the one where you are standing beside the open window looking drowsy and beautiful, a half-eaten pear in your left hand. What? You ask, handing me the other half while we silently watch the rain.
J. Sullivan
I’ve dreamt of similar things. Living in the mountains of Taiwan, or by the ocean in Montauk, or on a small cobblestone street in Rome. I’ve bemoaned not being born a man, with all its implicit privileges. I guilt myself for the things I could change, but never do, because, well, I want the life I have now, too.
I suppose this is why the words resonated with me so much. It’s the desire to have everything. There’s a greed in it that I see in myself. It’s envy, it’s entitlement. Who am I to think I could have it all, everything I could ever want, squeeze this life’s possibilities dry and feel fully satiated in the end?
I guess there are two ways to respond to that. One is, why not? Go for it! Sure, maybe you still won’t get to everything, but surely you’ll get to more than if you just sit here, waffling. And the reality is that, I try, when I have the will and the resources to make it happen. I sign up for the class. I buy the planet tickets. I throw down on a rental I surely can’t afford. But still. It’s not everything.
I’ve complained more than once that being a vampire must be nice, à la Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston in Only Lovers Left Alive. So much time! Just enough to indulge on passing whims, but to take your time with it, too. And that’s the crux of it. Time. I could get a lot done in this lifetime, but I don’t want to, really, not if I have to rush from dream to dream. I want to have the luxury of taking my time and still getting to everything, without the stress of fitting it all neatly into a life of sub-100 years. I have anxiety, remember?
Since vampirism is not an option, nor is experiencing every version of myself via the multiverse, I suppose this is the next best thing to quell my anxiety. Because the second way to respond is to say—hey, you don’t have to do that. Well, you can’t, but even if you could, you might want this, what you have. It’s a much more compelling declaration than just be here, be present, appreciate what you have, which is essentially what this poem is saying, but in a way that actually sticks. Especially because it’s about love. Not loving a place or an experience, but a person. Which, for a romantic like myself, is the kind of thing that’s going to get its claws into my heart. I don’t think I would have bought the print of this poem if it weren’t for the fact that I also recently saw Everything Everywhere All At Once, in which one of the more memorable lines was what Waymond says to Evelyn:
In another life, I would have really liked just doing laundry and taxes with you.
Along with what Evelyn says to her daughter:
Of all the places I could be, I just want to be here with you.
Laundry, taxes, sharing a pear while watching the rain. It’s so mundane, but the beauty of it is that it’s all right here, for all of us. We can enjoy it now, with someone we love, and maybe on our deathbeds, that’s all we ever really wanted in the end.
I mean, I might have to take it from someone who’s traveled the multiverse.
Vampires might have come to similar conclusions. Even Eve says to Adam:
How can you’ve lived for so long and still not get it? This self-obsession is a waste of living. It could be spent on surviving things, appreciating nature, nurturing kindness and friendship, and dancing!