Maybe in Another Life

by Taylor Jenkins Reid

I’m scared that I will never do anything of value with my life.

“Sometimes I worry I’ll never find a place to call home.”

How do you mourn something you never knew you had? Something you never wanted but something real, something important.

“Just get over it, OK? You and me. It’s happening. Stop trying to find cracks in it.” He puts down his knife and fork. “Maybe there are no cracks in this. Can you handle that?”

Things will always work out

“I’m trying to believe that God doesn’t make mistakes.”

“That love makes you do crazy things, that sometimes you have to do things that seem wrong from the outside but you know are right.

It doesn’t matter if we don’t mean to do the things we do. It doesn’t matter if it was an accident or a mistake. It doesn’t even matter if we think this is all up to fate. Because regardless of our destiny, we still have to answer for our actions. We make choices, big and small, every day of our lives, and those choices have consequences.

We have to face those consequences head-on, for better or worse. We don’t get to erase them just by saying we didn’t mean to. Fate or not, our lives are still the results of our choices. I’m starting to think that when we don’t own them, we don’t own ourselves.

“I think everything is happening exactly as it’s supposed to.”

“So I’m not going to go around worrying too much,” I tell her. “I’m just going to do my best and live under the assumption that if there are things in this life that we are supposed to do, if there are people in this world we are supposed to love, we’ll find them. In time. The future is so incredibly unpredictable that trying to plan for it is like studying for a test you’ll never take. I’m OK in this moment.

So I have to think that while I may exist in other universes, none of them are as sweet as this.