Hell Isn’t Meeting the Person You Could Have Been

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 There’s a saying that hell is meeting the person you could have become.

…As in one day you meet the best-timeline version of yourself and realize you’ve squandered your newly-seen-as-meager existence.

“Aww, he’s so great and I’m crap and wasted my life” you would think.

…And that would be your own personal hell.

Except I’d like to argue that a truer hell is to live constantly worried about keeping up with that guy.

It’s worth saying that everyone’s hell is different. Everyone’s motivation is different.

One person’s “just do it” is another person’s toxic bro advice.

One person’s motivational messiah is another’s cringe factory.

It’s also said that competing with yourself is the healthiest competition.

I think this is more about comparing to our past records and achievements instead of the world at large, in which there is always someone ahead of us.

But if we can engage in toxic competition with someone who is always ahead of us… our future self or our best timeline potential could qualify.

Since we only ever live in a series of ‘nows’…

In the end what matters is if we are getting joy and contributing net positives, in a sustainable way.

…Which is supported by learning either to derive meaning from the lives we live, or maybe in rare cases, to not need meaning at all.

The questions become:

  • How can we envision better futures as carrots, and not sticks for our current selves?
  • Can we draw ‘mentorship’ from future us instead of competing with best-case-scenario-present us?
  • What if present-day us turns out to be a top 1% possible version? How would that affect our sense of gratitude for now vs. yearning for ‘betterness’?

And what I think I’m getting at is: how do we most nurture and appreciate who we are now?

Because nurturing now fertilizes the seeds of our future.

And maybe the real hell isn't meeting the person you could've been, but it is letting that fear turn you into a hungry ghost— exhausting yourself, chasing but never arriving.

Then you’d be missing the infinite beautiful ‘now’ the only moment we can ever live in.

That sounds like hell.

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