The different versions of lives we wish for. | by Still Life Closet | Sep, 2025

How many times have we wished for a different version of our life? A better life, a happy life, a life without regrets.

Whenever we see ourselves failing or carrying regrets on our shoulders, we wish we had a different version of this life.

I remember exactly a month ago, I was totally drained, depressed, sad, and buried under a heap of regrets. I kept thinking: maybe I should have continued playing handball in high school, maybe I should have kept up with chess, maybe I should have made more friends in college, maybe I shouldn’t have entered that relationship, out of desperate need for attention and love, maybe I shouldn’t have given up on CAT and should have kept preparing for the MBA exam. Maybe I would have gotten into that top B-school. Maybe I would be studying or working abroad right now. Maybe I should have worked harder on the people I loved. Maybe I would have had a better career. Maybe.

All these thoughts were weighing on my mind. I even wondered if it was post-grad depression — because I was no longer entitled to being a student, no longer had the structure and motivation that identity gave me.

I no longer know what I wanted to be in life.

The constant “maybe” felt heavy; the thought that a different version of life would have made me feel less sad and happier in other dimensions of life.

That’s when I caught myself staring at a book on my bookshelf that had been lying there for more than two years, waiting to be read. It felt like it was peeking at me, asking to be opened.

It’s true, when something is meant to come to you, it will.

The book was The Midnight Library by Matt Haig.

It talked exactly about how I was feeling. It showed that life itself is not the problem — you can live any version of your life. It’s the regret, those piled-up regrets, that destroy you and the people around you.

We don’t have to be everything, know everything, experience everything, or become everything. At any stage of life, we must fully live and love what’s in our hands, no matter how small or large the moments are.

Does this make me less depressed? Maybe — maybe not.

But I am certain that wanting a different life won’t fix this feeling. No number of “better” lives will erase regret. What helps is knowing that the past is done, the present is where I write my thoughts, and the future is still unwritten. Even if it is too late — or maybe not late at all. I still have full control over how I lead my life.

There are still pages of the future that are empty, waiting to be written, lived, and experienced. I must move past the regrets, because I know for a fact that there are infinite possibilities and infinite ways in which I can shape my life.

So, I have to be kinder, loving, and not dwell on the past I have already created for myself.

The future is yet to be written by my own hands, and that thought helps me see life in a new light.

Still Life Closet.

23.09.2025