The Heartbreak of a Finite Life

Or, wherever this story takes me, I hope it will be enough

When I was ten, I was going to be a cricketer. Or a pilot. Or a scientist. Or, in a particularly bold moment, a cricketer-scientist who flew planes on the weekends and solved global warming in his spare time. I was not concerned with the logistics of this life, or even its biological plausibility. I just knew I had options.

Everything was relentlessly possible. Astronaut? Sure. Nobel Peace Prize winner? Why not? Rock star, wizard, dinosaur tamer? All perfectly viable career paths.

But here’s the weird thing about getting older—we begin to realise, quietly and gradually, that every decision we make diminishes the infinite dreams we once carried.

We select a career, a city, a person, and each choice weaves itself like a thread into the fabric of our finite lives, defining the borders. Suddenly, doors begin to close—not loudly, not in some grand slam of fate—but quietly, with a soft click, until one day you pause and reflect on all the doors you haven’t walked through.

No matter how satisfying our present realities might be, that realisation is painful.

There’s a special kind of melancholy in understanding you cannot visit every city you imagine yourself wandering through or read all the books that accumulate relentlessly on your shelves.

As for me, I’ll never know most of the world’s people, most of their languages, customs, or dreams. And I feel this pang of grief—a small sadness, but a sadness nonetheless—knowing that these infinite possibilities, real and beautiful as they might’ve been, are beyond my grasp.

Maybe this is just a kind of innate mortality—not the fear of our ultimate death, exactly—but the confrontation with our limited existence. The understanding that we get one story, just one chance to write ourselves onto the pages of life. There are no infinite drafts, only this single unfolding narrative: imperfect and unpredictable and messy and holy.

I find myself wrestling with this tension. If believing anything was possible was my oddly comforting childhood friend, does facing the narrowing scope of what I can actually become mean surrendering my optimism? I’ve prided myself on being stubbornly hopeful—even naively optimistic at times—that things will always get better, richer, fuller. But does growing up mean tempering that optimism in me, quieting the dreamer in me just to accept limitations?

I’m not so sure.

Because optimism, true optimism, is for sure not denial. It’s not pretending constraints don’t exist—it’s recognising them and believing anyway. It’s about sensing that hope can remain sturdy, steady, and resilient even when infinite possibilities narrow themselves to practical realities.

And if hope must only exist behind doors not yet shut, well, isn’t that still hope worth fighting for—a hope more precious precisely because it’s worn and lived-in and earned?

So yes, my story might feel more finite at this point in life, but infinite possibility, after all, was only ever theoretical.

Real meaning, I’m slowly beginning to realise, comes from choosing—imperfect, uncertain choosing. The life I’ve chosen speaks louder and deeper than the limitless ones I could imagine. My life is real. It’s messy; it’s filled with stumbles and tiny triumphs, bruised knees and quiet joys, and love so bright it often hurts to look directly at.

Maybe the heartbreak of growing older is merely a symptom of being alert, of being alive. In mourning cities I’ll never wander, lives I’ll never live, or skills and dreams I’ll never master, I’m simply honouring the truth that the human experience will always have a bittersweet edge. Maybe mourning the infinitude of possibilities is precisely what allows us to truly live our finite, one-shot, human lives.

The story of my life might be smaller and simpler than what I dreamed as a child looking out toward distant galaxies—but it’s mine, and it’s precious precisely because it has limits. Because it is finite, every chapter, every page, every word gains meaning and gravity.

Real is enough. In fact, real is all we ever really get.

So I remind myself time and again: It’s okay to grieve what will never be, as long as I remember also to cherish what actually is. Yes, my optimism must now grapple with a world of borders and limits—but perhaps this refined optimism, tempered by reality, is even more powerful and honest than before. Perhaps that’s what always defines us humans anyway—an ability to find wonder and hope in the small, real stories that fill the universe of our one finite lives.

And as long as I’m here, as long as doors remain open—even just a few—I’ll joyfully, stubbornly, optimistically step through them, not out of fantasy or desperation, but out of fierce presence and curiosity. And in doing so, I truly believe the future will always be better than today—not because it’s perfect or limitless, but precisely because, in spite of limitations, hope endures. After all, we’ve yet to know what surprises, friendships, heartbreaks, and revelations await us down even the narrowest of paths.

And meanwhile, wherever this story takes me, I hope—and deeply believe—it will be enough.

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I went backpacking in Sri Lanka in March. The trip gave me more than I asked for—sunburns, scribbled thoughts I didn’t finish, and this weird, aching quiet. The kind that makes you hear your own voice again, like really hear it. Somewhere between the long drives and strange silences, I started answering questions I didn’t know I’d asked. These posts are me pulling at those questions. Seeing what falls apart. And what doesn’t.