I came across this idea while I was reading "The War of Art," by Steven Pressfield. Maybe you’ve heard the words "You have two lives".
The usual explanation for these words is that the second life represents the moment when you really start living, usually after an accident or after you have the realization of how fragile and short life can really be.
What I’ve just mentioned is a good take on having two lives, but Steven Pressfield suggested another point of view. He talks about the life that we live and about the unlived life within us. And also, about this thing called "resistance" that stays between those two lives.
I believe we have all considered the person we could become and our true calling at some point in our lives. Maybe we could accomplish extremely great things if we only realized what we were meant to do.
As Steven Pressfield puts it in his book, we may be writers that don’t write, painters that don’t paint, or entrepreneurs who never started their business. Well, in these cases, that’s THE RESISTANCE that he talks about.
If that resistance defeats us, we won’t find the way that we’re supposed to take and instead, we'll take a destructive way of alcohol, drugs, or we’ll simply give in to other meaningless things that will take our time, our time that was supposed to be used on something valuable.
I think we all know some people who have been defeated by resistance; people with great potential, people who could have been so much more, but they didn’t take the road that they were supposed to take.
This resistance that Steven Pressfield talks about can manifest as procrastination, fear, vices and all that it will bring is unhappiness.
If we have no idea of what to do with our lives, we should try to experience different things and find the ones that bring us satisfaction.
And I’m not talking about a cheap and quick pleasure, because that has no substance. We have to find something that will have a good impact, something that can make us proud.
Cheers!
