Double Lives: The Selves You Chose Not to Become (And Where Are They Now)

Interintellect founder Anna Gát dives into the mystery unlived lives: the shadow lives, the double lives, the paths we did not take – but which might linger as an aftertaste and come back from time to time to haunt us.

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn’t quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”

It is a characteristic of a life well-lived that it unfolds over a chosen path. We as individuals, playful and uncertain in youth, are supposed to make a big bet in adulthood: decide on what kind of life we will lead; select a framework fitting for our personality, skills, values and ideals. Some of us will thus end up far from home, some as founders of great families or companies – some will emphasise creative output through our work, while some will find purpose in material or financial production, and enjoying the fruits of our labour.

In this cheeky, intimate Salon we will look at the opportunity costs of lives well-lived:

What were all the selves you did not choose?

Where are those parallel, unlived lives right now — do they still hover in the background, do you still sometimes meet them face to face in the form of other people who did choose the very things you did not?

When you do, how does that feel? What happens to your reality in those moments?

And can our choices ever be unmade, iterated on, picked apart, without undue loss and suffering?

Join us to find out this, and more…!

To read beforehand:

https://nautil.us/issue/89/the-dark-side/are-you-yoda-or-darth-vader 

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/12/21/what-if-you-could-do-it-all-over 

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/jun/13/missing-out-adam-phillips-review

https://fs.blog/2014/04/the-war-of-art-and-the-unlived-life/ 

https://aeon.co/essays/living-the-life-authentic-bernard-williams-on-paul-gauguin

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/44212/the-love-song-of-j-alfred-prufrock 

Time zones:

10 am Los Angeles

1 pm New York

6 pm London

7 pm Berlin

10 pm Dubai