People do not start their lives when they are born.

People do not start their lives when they are born. For a while, your life is no business of your own; you are a flesh and blood machine designed to poop, and if you are lucky, someone will love you beyond all sanity, and keep you safe and warm. Eventually you will die, and the consensus is that when this happens, the world will be none of your business, all over again.

At times in between, we come alive. Some people remember the feeling, a sudden realization that “oh, this is me, I am real, these things are in fact happening to me and I am an active, genuine ‘thing’ in the world!”. Often we live for a while as real people with agency, then snooze back into mere function. For some, routine is measured and controlled, a choice, part of a fulfilling life; for others it is an autopilot or screensaver, from which they occasionally re-awaken, sometimes to their dismay. If a person allows themself to snoozily drift too long, they will wake up in a life they would never have chosen: an unwelcome career, restrictive debts or mortgage, unfit body, unhealthy relationship or deep loneliness.

Sometimes, people assume that whatever has happened before, is the truth of the way things are, and must continue to happen. So, they do nothing about the parts of it which make them bored, or unhappy, or cruel or pointless or dull.