On the thousand unlived lives we mourn — and the grace hiding inside every one.

My son said it out of nowhere in the passenger seat today: “unsatisfactory disease.” A lightbulb went off. I told him right then — I’m going to take your word and write about it.

The dis-ease we inherit

I grew up surrounded by adults who seemed to carry this thing — this unsatisfied restlessness — and it drove me crazy. The sighs, the wistfulness, the constant sense that life had somehow offered them the wrong door. I swore I would never catch it.

Then my late twenties arrived, and I caught it too. How does a person end up with the very thing they despised? How did it take me double the years before I even had a word for it? It took my son learning life to name what so many of us silently carry: unsatisfactory dis-ease.

So, let’s dig. What actually creates this dis-ease in the human psyche?

“We reach a point where we see a thousand unlived versions of our lives — all the could-have-been, the should-have-been, the fantasies that play on a private screen only we can see.”

The thousand unlived lives!

It is worth noting that the fantasies we play in our minds are almost always better than reality ever could be — because in fantasy, it is just you. There are no other people with their own needs, their own bad days, their own limitations, their own believes. But we don’t live in a world of solo. Reality is shared, negotiated, complicated.

We reach a point where we understand something uncomfortable: regardless of which path we chose, the ego will find cause for regret when it looks back. Every direction contains a thousand other deaths to mourn — potential realities, potential selves that quietly dissolved the moment you said yes to this one.

That is bound to create some form of dis-ease within the psyche. The question then becomes — what do we do with it?

Surrender and peace

Every decision you have ever made — every person you dated, every place you visited, every place you lived — becomes perfect the moment you view it as an opportunity for growth and evolution. This is not wishful thinking. It requires trusting that the unfolding of your life is guided by the same force that breathes breath into you. The same guidance that shifts the seasons and it is always calling you home.

When you step back and see life from the soul rather than the ego, you can more easily relax into the suffering, the pain, and every consequence of every choice you ever made. You begin to see the beauty in all of it. The experiences you chose were simply what your soul needed in this particular journey — even the ones that are, right now, causing you pain.

Sit in it. Trust where it leads.

“He who learns must suffer; and even in our sleep pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom by the awful grace of God.”

— Aeschylus

“The awful grace of God”

Every pain and suffering that flows from any of your choices is like the process of making a diamond shine. Gradually, that pressure and friction remove the ego — little by little — until your diamond is bright. The illusions are washed away. Slowly, your heart opens to allow the light of awareness to shine through you.

When you can see your pain as an “awful grace,” you will no longer fear what you thought you had missed. The dis-ease begins to loosen its grip.

We think we are unsatisfied because we are sitting in the pain. We think we took a wrong turn. But this path is not your enemy — not if you view it from a soul’s perspective.

“This does not mean we should chase pain. But when pain arrives, approach it with curiosity. What is it aiming to show you?”

Working with the pain

Work with it. Listen to it. Sit in it.

Find the grace in the darkest moment and know that it is truly a mercy. The unsatisfactory dis-ease you feel is not a sign that you chose wrong. It is a sign that you are alive, that you are aware, and that your soul is still doing its work — still pressing your diamond into something that can carry the light.

That is not something to be despised. That is something to be trusted.

Thanks, son. You had no idea what you handed me in that car.

Always Learning, Kristin