“If this is truly our one life, then every choice feels like it carries the weight of forever.
But maybe that pressure is what keeps us from living at all.”
There is tranquility about the little things in life that some people, myself included, do not appreciate because they are usually filled with repetition. Life can become chronic as we, with the best of intentions, trade the present for focusing on future goals. The pull of your ambition and the competing need to ground yourself in the present creates the stress of your life and drives you to seek the likely possibilities of tomorrow instead of seizing the opportunities today. This creates the nagging feeling of uncertainty about whether you really are alive and actually living the life you built.
To begin with, when you stop doing the little things that make you happy, you begin to appreciate the bigger things in life. The same feeling, annoying, numbing, and repetitive, can be evoked from a job that feels lifeless and routine. Simply feeling the void left in the absence of seeking little pieces of happiness and joy is a subtle, and slowly creeping, feeling. The idea that you've been living an “unlived” life does not usually happen spontaneously overnight, and does not come in the form of sudden chaotic changes. It is usually the result of small, cascading and relentless situations. Self neglect and unusually deferred happiness while waiting to achieve an incomplete goal, are some of the symptoms.
When that feeling of “unlived” life is present, it strikes an odd and interesting balance, with unhealthy, or misplaced, levels of positive outcome. It can be death of odds, or a blockade of a positive outcome in the present. Focusing all your frustration and anger on yourself for your failures and poor choices can completely distract you from the opportunities in the present, and put you in a position where you can achieve that. Joy can fake, but all of the authentic happiness that ever existed is a result of a true, complete, and a fully self owned life.

— For The Record Ink, The Cost of the Unlived Life (Substack)
full article → https://open.substack.com/pub//p/the-cost-of-the-unlived-life