A Faustian Bargain

Life is all about tradeoffs. You get this, but you don’t get that. You can fight it, act like you’ll be the one to hold onto everything at once, but sooner or later, you will realize that everything is a Faustian bargain.

You do not get to stack the deck in your favour. You’re chasing one thing, while life’s quietly rearranging the rest. By the time you look back, you see what you’ve missed out on.

I’ve landed on the other side of those tradeoffs more times than I can count. Sometimes the thing I wanted most never showed up. I didn’t fall short. Because I now realize it was never mine to begin with and the tradeoff was already built into the game of life. Of my life and of your life.

You spend enough time watching how people move, you start to see it everywhere. The traits that push someone forward, the ones that lead to success, create art, open doors, are the same traits that do not lend itself to a life with a white picket fence. That neat version of life doesn’t fit with the people who are wired for variance. The polished storybook ending will never sit in the same room as freedom, risk, or obsession.

That’s never bothered me. I wouldn’t trade what I have, even knowing what it cost. For all my faults, and I’ve got plenty, I know they’re wired into the foundation of my being. The life I live, the space I’ve carved out, the freedom to live how I do, none of it exists without the flaws I carry.

Sometimes I think people misconstrue that. They read this blog, or hear me speak and think I’m disillusioned, like I’m walking around sad about what slipped through my fingers. But I’ve never felt that way. I’m actually quite happy with my life. The version of it I have feels me to the core. I wouldn’t want the other side of the deal, even if it looked good on paper.

God plays fair. Nature doesn’t deal in accidents. The tradeoffs land where they’re meant to. Whenever it feels like life isn’t fair, pay attention.

The only reason you have what you have is because of what you don’t have. Does that make sense? The good isn’t clean. It’s built on the back of what never showed up. Every part of your life that feels solid is tied to the parts that evaded you. You don’t get one without the other. Whether you like the terms or not, that’s how the deal is made.

Our strengths and our limitations are often the same thing, just viewed from different angles. The traits that give you certain advantages inevitably close off other possibilities. Your life isn't shaped by what you've gained, but more so shaped by what is absent. Picture it like negative space in art, where the empty areas define the image more than the filled ones.

My solitude enables my depth of thought. My rejection of social expectations creates space for authentic self-expression. My melancholic disposition sharpens my ability to see the world as it is, not as I want it to be.

This can be a sobering thought because it means accepting that some doors really are closed off to you.

Sometimes I laugh at how absurd it all is. How hard we push, how much we think we can outrun the cosmic giggle of life, like we’ll be the ones to hold onto every version of life at once. But the structure doesn’t bend. You get what’s yours to have. The rest fades out, no matter how much you think you can stretch across both sides.

I wouldn’t change it. Even the doors that never opened. Even the parts of me that don’t always land clean. It’s all part of the same thing. I’ll take it over the illusion of having it all.

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