Issue #76: Can we be each other's parallel lives?

We’re taught to compare and covet what others have – but what if we share in it, instead?

In 1982, Helen Gurley Brown, the then-editor of US Cosmopolitan magazine, released her book Having It All: Love, Success, Sex, Money, Even If You're Starting with Nothing, establishing a feminist debate which rages some four decades later: ‘Can women have it all?’. The book received criticism of the same ilk as Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In, published a decade ago: that it put unrealistic pressure on women; that it overlooked the institutional problems around childcare and equal pay – all very valid. 

Yet, I’ve recently been thinking about this phenomenon not as a gendered one, but as a universal one. As I move through my early thirties, I see my peers’ lives solidifying around me. And while those milestones are celebrated, there’s also an undercurrent of loss. The home ownership that brings with it the weight of responsibility; being tied to one place indefinitely. The serious relationship which means never again kissing a dark handsome stranger. The longed-for promotion that comes with a three-month notice period. The second child that you had to have to complete the family, which introduces chaos into your significantly more manageable one-child set-up. 

We only get to live one life, and once you start making solid commitments – to a career path, to a person, to a family, to a calling – it comes at the exclusion of others. Having X means not having Y. And sure, there are more socially-applauded choices than others. But that doesn’t mean they don’t come with their own losses.

Rather than accept that each choice, however worthy, has its own set of pros and cons, we tend to compare unfavourably. Sleep-deprived parents still likely fall down the rabbit-hole of their schoolfriend’s wanderlust-inducing Instagram feed, in the same way that friend probably stalks them right back from the airport waiting room during a delayed transit. Sometimes it feels like myself and my fellow thirtysomethings (and beyond) are covertly sizing each other up, thinking, ‘Did I make the right choices, or did they? Who “won”?’ None of us, and all of us. 

As time goes by, I certainly don’t have it all – nor does anyone I know. Instead, I’m in the process of accepting all that I don’t have, in the hope of streamlining down to the select few things that I do really want.

Because the long-list of things I want; or sort of want; or don’t want but think I should want, is vast and mutually-exclusive. For instance, sometimes I want a tight-knit university friendship group… but I also want the freedom to surround myself with people I love and feel inspired by, regardless of history or complex social dynamics. As things stand, I have exactly two remaining university friends, and one lives in Berlin. I always look forward to seeing them both, though.

Where I’ve found consolation is in realising that I don’t have to necessarily compare myself to close friends. Instead, I can share in their lives – especially in some of the things that, inevitably, I will miss out on myself. Living abroad. Being a high-flying lawyer. Being a youngish mum. Making a 30 under 30 list. Having that massive university gang.

Some things I may still do – others are parallel lives that I could have led, but haven’t. It’s in being close to other people, spending quality time together (especially in our homes) and having honest conversations, that I feel the illusion of living multiple lives, rather than simply my own limited one. Maybe 1% of me is in my friend’s 17-year-long relationship, because she’s shared so many anecdotes with me over the years. Another 1% of me went to architecture school, because I’ve spent so much time with a friend’s former cohort. In further imaginative leaps, I’m at least 1% a parent, an expat and a yoga teacher.

I may never get to actually have what they have. But I get to inhabit it, in a sense – in the same way I step into a novel when I’m reading it. We were never supposed to have it all. Nor were we supposed to consume each other’s lives from a social media feed, eyeballing polished veneers rather than bumping up against messier reality, so saturated with examples of everything we don’t have that we forget to be grateful for what we do. 

The closer I get to friends – the more curious and empathetic I feel towards them – the less I feel the need to covet or envy what they have. I get the sense I’m living parallel lives, rather than just my own. Not having it all, but sharing it all instead.

Reading…

A generalist guide to architecture, called How To Enjoy Architecture by Charles Holland – an eerily-perfect gift, which I’d recommend to anyone who wants to enjoy walking around their city that little bit more.