ThoseThingsHappen

How would it feel to be in different shoes? To have lived in different neighborhood? To have different friends that surround us? To have different parents that raise us? To be (literally) in different body? 

That is how A live everyday of his life:

I wake up.

Immediately I have to figure out who I am. It’s not just the body — opening my eyes and discovering whether the skin on my arm is light or dark, whether my hair is long or short, whether I’m fat or thin, boy or girl, scarred or smooth. The body is the easiest thing to adjust to, if you’re used to waking up in a new one each morning. It’s the life, the context of the body, that can be hard to grasp.

Every day I am someone else. I am myself — I know I am myself — but I am also someone else.

It has always been like this.

A has waken up in an obese body, and in Beyonce-like body. In a straight-A student, and in an actor. In a body of an athlete. In a body of a drug addict. In a body that try to kill herself. In a boy, a girl, and transgendered. In both the twins body. In a cold family, and in a warm one. Single mother, different kind of sibling, and as the only child. Reading this book gives us a glimpse feeling of living another person’s life.

I am a drifter, and as lonely as that can be, it is also remarkably freeing. I will never define myself in terms of anyone else. I will never feel the pressure of peers or the burden of parental expectation. I can view everyone as pieces of a whole, and focus on the whole, not the pieces. 

At the start of the game, you had no control over who you were or your environment. By the end of the game that becomes true again. Your past decisions drastically shape where you end up, and if you’re happy, healthy, fulfilled – or not – in your final days there’s far less you can do about it.

That’s why your strategy is important. Because by the time most of us have figured life out, we’ve used up too much of the best parts.