Making room for unlived life

Hello, this is Priya Iyer. Welcome to Ten Thousand Journeys where I explore the themes and stages of archetypal journeys through personal essays, poems, and books. If you’re reading this in an email, I hope you’ll also visit the website to take part in the community conversation and to dip into the archives. If you are not already subscribed, you can subscribe here.

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Photography by Priya Iyer

Dear Reader, 

I am in front of my computer at 4:38 AM. The sky outside is a shade of gray-blue that is hard to describe. I have a glass of warm water next to me since it feels too early for the morning cup of tea. I pull up a blank document to work on the newsletter. Before starting, I whisper prayers to the gods and goddesses of beginnings, thresholds, and writing. Send the words, I urge them. I know they can hear me. 

On some days, I stare at the screen, add a few words, delete them, drink some water, open the Photos app and browse pictures from five years ago, walk to the window to see if the neighbors are awake, return to my computer, write a sentence, take note of the lightening sky, imagine someone, who resembles Smeagle from the Lord Of The Rings movies, is staring at me from outside the smaller window that is missing curtains, and then, at 6:30, go to the kitchen and brew tea. On other days, I make progress with the writing.

“You must have a room, or a certain hour or so a day, where you don’t know what was in the newspapers that morning, you don’t know who your friends are, you don’t know what you owe anybody, you don’t know what anybody owes to you. This is a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be. This is the place of creative incubation. At first you may find that nothing happens there. But if you have a sacred place and use it, something eventually will happen.”
― Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth

When I started this post, I wanted to write about how important it is to make metaphorical and literal room for our pursuits, to give ourselves both place and time to incubate. It’s like putting ourselves in an alchemical crucible. I wanted to share the photograph of this gorgeous cottage¹ with the goddess gracing the threshold and tell you how I wish my crucible looked like this place! I could do with even a tiny version of this cottage. Or barring that, a dedicated writing room with an actual door that I can pull shut behind me. I would love a space I can decorate with vintage embroidered textiles, art that holds special meaning for me, and piles of books everywhere, somewhere that I can disappear into and be a ‘real’ writer. There is something powerful in having the right, supportive surroundings to pursue your work though, of course, we can’t afford to wait until the surroundings are just so. As I wrote, I realized I wasn’t writing just about making room (space, time) to do things you love. I was writing about resuscitating an unlived life.

“What is unlived life? It includes all those essential aspects of you that have not been adequately integrated into your experience. …. We all carry with us a vast inventory of abandoned, unrealized, and underdeveloped talents and potentials. …. For everything you choose (or that has been chosen for you), something else is “unchosen.” Consider for a moment something in your life that you cannot do and, as a result, you feel diminished in some way. What do you resent about your life? The endless demands of children or your job? The inattention of your spouse? The limitations of an illness? Whatever seems to be missing—that is part of your unlived life.”

— Living Your Unlived Life: Coping with Unrealized Dreams and Fulfilling Your Purpose in the Second Half of Life by Robert A. Johnson, Jerry Ruhl

Unlived life is all the unexplored, unexpressed potential within you, both creative and destructive. It’s the life (lives) you didn’t live, the person you didn’t become, and the qualities you didn’t express. It’s the path you didn’t take. In their book, Johnson and Ruhl write that the task of the second half of life is to bring awareness to these aspects and in doing so, we renew our engagement with life.

“The Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung wrote that “the greatest burden a child must bear is the unlived life of the parents,” by which he meant that where and how our caretakers were stuck in their development becomes an internal paradigm for us also to be stuck. Frequently we find ourselves dealing with a parent’s unresolved issues.”

— Living Your Unlived Life: Coping with Unrealized Dreams and Fulfilling Your Purpose in the Second Half of Life by Robert A. Johnson, Jerry Ruhl

Being a real writer is part of my unlived life, one that I am bringing to life now. Reader, what is in your unlived life?

Best,

Priya

1. This is a rental cottage within a sustainable hotel resort in southern India. When I saw it, I wanted to move in and never move out! Here’s the link if you’re interested.