#11: when will I start my life

I have a feeling that the days when I felt paralysed with questions of existence are now behind me. What a relief. I feel the joy of living again, wanting to live again, looking forward to things.

I feel transformed, as if something fundamental about my identity and existence has shifted — or more precisely, how I choose to exist. It’s challenging to assess the extent of this change since it's hard to be both the observer and the observed. Yet, this time, I believe I've got it right.

This sense of transformation gives me the feeling of having started a new life. I’ve metaphorically killed one version of myself and given birth to another. In this rebirth, I am both the guiding parent and the exploring child. The parent in me is writing this, while the child in me is living this new life. The parent sets the direction for the early days, while the child is learning about the world. The parent bears the responsibility of making choices, and the child just can’t wait to start his life.

This last bit — the urge to start a new life — is what I am thinking about this morning. In this new body, with a new set of priorities, with a new foundational understanding of human existence, with a new value system to discern what matters, with a new set of interests to give life meaning, there’s a longing to reach a point where this newness becomes familiar.

But I know it takes time, and during this transition, I sometimes wonder, when my new life will truly start. Though it has started, I sometimes feel it hasn’t, because I am not yet where I want to be.

And yet, as I also know, there is no ultimate destination. There never is. We create artificial signposts to give ourselves a sense of order, to avoid feeling perpetually lost.

Right now, the novelty aspect of new signposts is thrilling. And the reason I can’t wait to start things anew — after reaching my destination — is that if the old pattern is true, the moment I live a new life, and do full justice to the values inherent in that way of life, when I take it to the full extremes, a new realisation dawns, and a new me appears. To repeat the cycle of death and life. In one lifetime. It’s fascinating.

What don’t I know that I will know in a while? What new truths will emerge? How will that change my perspective?

The thing I have now realised about myself is that I want to live these questions. And figure out answers on the go — I don’t want them to be served on a platter. Let’s say the future me gets access to a time machine and comes through a revolving door to tell me, “this is what you will believe ten years from now, maybe you want to change your way of living right away” — um, no, not interested. What will happen in the future, let it happen in the future. I am living in the present, trying to do things, trying to figure out the world, and it’s in this process of living with the burden of questions with no right answer that I find the most meaningful bits of life.

An unexpected outcome of this introspection and feeling of living multiple lives is a newfound urge to write fiction. I would have laughed at even the possibility of this idea a year ago, but here I am: for the last ten days or so, the idea of writing fiction has consumed me. I keep imagining where my stories will go, who my characters will be, their purposes, and their roles in the narratives I wish to weave. If I can live multiple lives within my own, then through fiction, I can experience even more, exploring the vast expanse of human experience through empathy and imagination. It’s the most thrilling thing to have happened to me lately, and I can’t wait to get started.

This might be exactly what I needed during my phase of crisis: a creative outlet to confront inner demons, to navigate existential dilemmas, to process the world's pain, and figure out what love really is. I can’t just do that in my head. It’s overwhelming. But I can let the characters I create share this burden with me.

And so, after all this time, I feel like I am truly living — not just one life, but many, simultaneously. And I can’t wait to get started.