It's Worse Than You Think

It’s Worse Than You Think

I love the psychotherapist Bruce Tift’s wry observation that he no longer experiences any problems in his marriage – but only because he no longer defines “the experience of emotional disturbance” as a problem.
You get to live more intensely, because you’re no longer making your full participation in life dependent on reaching some standard – of productivity, of certainty about the future, of competence, etcetera – that you were never going to reach in the first place.
But I love what Evans doesn’t do in the piece, too. He doesn’t turn it into a lecture about seizing the day. Nor does he dwell on what he wished he’d done differently, thereby implying that there might be some cunning way to avoid the experience of loss. No, his essay suggests, it’s worse than that: a life fully lived just is painfully bittersweet, the joy inextricably intertwined with loss. The major chapters of life, such as your children’s childhoods, just will feel like they’re over too fast, pretty much whatever you do.