‘Stop living the wrong life’, I read, followed by examples after examples of people persevering through rejection, pain, and negative environments as they insist on living the right life.

Although I can imagine the many positive ways ‘stop living the wrong life’ could be interpreted (follow your dreams is my favourite), my critical faculties paused at the thought of potential assumptions and biases this phrase might also imply. I couldn’t help but question the very foundation that such an imperative is built on.

So what is the right life? Or is this just something you say after living the wrong life? Whatever right or wrong is. Are those people living and persevering through their painful life aware that they are living the right life? Or do they also wish to change their paths?  Is changing a path but an illusion, and a new path will come anyway whatever life you’re living? Could a conscious decision to live a certain life be good or bad for you?

I, for one, have had doubts about my path. But, there’s another side to this. This is the one and only life I know that got me here. The only life I’ve lived to bring me to this point where I determine that this path is not for me.

So who would I be if I’d lived a different life? I might have been this or that, someone I looked up to at different stages of ‘my’ life and thought: ‘their life is great(er than mine)!’. But this is the influence of living outside ourselves. We see only what’s outside us – a fault in human anatomy perhaps? And we forget that our life is just as unique.

What self-help books (including those advising to ‘stop living the wrong life’) might provide is the comfort that we are not alone in pain, and that there’s always a way through pain to live how we want to. On the surface, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. But, for me, this is founded on the shaky ground that our life is not good enough, and it can always be better. Isn’t it enough that we’re raised to look out and up to others and forget the uniqueness and incomparability of what’s inside? So now, this is reinforced in the one set of words that are supposed to heal. Isn’t it more positive to be told to appreciate your life first, see the good things, remember the good lessons, and then decide who you want to be from THIS moment on?

What is missing is a celebration of life so far. All that rejection, pain and negativity is but a part of ‘my’ life, and from my viewpoint right here and now, I do not regret any bit of it! How can I regret what made me ‘me’? And now, I have no control over my past life anyway, so regret is pointless.

I am reflecting on this now because I’ve been through my unique life. I accept it, I make my own beliefs, and I look at here and now and how far I have come, physically, emotionally, spiritually, and all else, for not a single being can see the world and ‘my’ life through my eyes.

So, if anyone says ‘stop living the wrong life’, I think they should qualify that by adding ‘stop judging your life, and start living it in the way that makes your unique YOU thrive and prosper inside’. We might need to hear others’ stories sometimes, and learn from them, but often times, I see people immerse themselves in others’ lives to the point of neglecting their own, or to the point that they want to live someone else’s life. You can only have your life to make of it what you will. Lessons from others are great examples of human perseverance and tenacity, and that is a great source of hope. But, at the end of the day, the (right) path you follow can only be driven by YOU following your own bliss.

It is, after all, YOUR life.