Imagined Biographies
Does anyone's life turn out the way they planned?
“We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” ~ Joan Didion
Does Anyone’s Life Turn Out the Way They Planned?
The question came from one of the participants in a group I was facilitating this past week.
We had just finished a meditation exploring opposites, a practice designed to loosen our grip on fixed identities and discover a deeper inner knowing. As often happens, the conversation that followed was far more interesting than anything I could have planned.
One person realized that she had spent years believing she was a loser because her life hadn’t turned out the way she expected. Somewhere along the way, she had begun comparing her real life to an imagined one, a version in which every plan had unfolded, every opportunity had worked out, and every milestone had arrived on schedule.
As she spoke, something shifted.
She began to see that the very experiences she had judged as failures had also made her resilient, compassionate, and uniquely herself.
Then she paused and asked, almost to herself:
“Does anyone’s life turn out the way they planned?”
The group was quiet.
It was one of those questions that doesn’t really need an answer because everyone already knows it.
Probably not.
Or at least, not in the way we imagine.
Listening to her, I realized I wasn’t so different. I’ve been thinking about that question ever since.
Because if I’m honest, there are days when it cuts straight through me.
A few weeks ago, after a dentist appointment, I found myself spiraling into familiar worries. Would I ever be able to afford another car? Would I ever own a place of my own again? Had I somehow taken a wrong turn years ago that left me permanently behind everyone else?
It’s remarkable how quickly the mind can construct an alternate biography.
In that imagined life, I made different decisions. I stayed on a practical career path. I had more financial security. I never lost what I lost.
It’s an impossible comparison because that life doesn’t exist.
Yet I sometimes judge my real life against it anyway.
The next day, I sat with a group working to rebuild their lives. One person recognized a painful story he had carried for years, that he would always return to prison, that every meaningful relationship would eventually fall apart, and this was simply who he was.
When invited to share after the meditation practice, he said something that stopped me:
“I don’t want to be that person anymore.”
In that moment, he hadn’t magically transformed. I was witnessing something subtler and far more powerful. He could suddenly see that who he thought he was, in fact, was a story.
I left work that day with the sense that I was exactly where I was supposed to be.
And yet, nothing about my circumstances had changed. The practical concerns, like paying bills and buying groceries, hadn’t disappeared.
But something about my orientation fundamentally shifted. Something within me felt a little more settled, aligned.
When I measure my life by the milestones I once imagined, it’s easy to conclude that I’ve fallen short.
When I measure it by the moments in which another human being begins to see themselves differently… by the privilege of witnessing someone discover their own strength… by the opportunity to sit beside people in some of the most difficult chapters of their lives…
I can’t help but think that perhaps my life unfolded exactly as it needed to. According to something I couldn’t have planned.
Perhaps that’s true for more of us than we realize.
Maybe the life we imagined was never meant to be a standard against which to judge the life we actually lived.
Maybe its purpose was simply to get us moving.
The real work begins when we stop comparing ourselves to an imaginary biography and become fully present to the life that is right in front of us.
And perhaps this is the better question:
“What has this life, this unexpected, imperfect, unplanned life, made possible that no other life could have?”
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As always you have me thinking! I don’t know if I imagined a life. When I was young I thought I would be a business woman and have an office. Ha! I got the office but the “business” became nonprofits and not corporate. I don’t think I had any idea about what “business” meant. I don’t know if I dared to dream of what life could be because for a long time existing was all I could manage. Now in my 50’s the dreams have started as well as moving those dreams to reality. I think I missed a lot but glad to have dreams now because they carry hope , excitement and light.