Our Ghost Lives: Why We Obsess Over Lives We Could Have Lived

Graphic by Yinne Smith

Recently, I was reading “Carrying the Ghosts of Lives Unlived,” by Kate Hope Day. She talked about imagining what it would have been like if she had her deceased older brother in her life, or what it would have been like if she had not met her husband while backpacking in Rome. She provided such thoughtful descriptions of the alternative to the life she’s had so far that it was obvious she had spent a considerable amount of time dedicated to the ideology of a “ghost life.”

Ghost lives are inherent to the human experience, I’m convinced. The “what ifs…” that we daydream about as we listen to music while unloading the dishwasher. It’s more than just wanting to be rich and famous-- sometimes it’s wishing you went on that trip with your friends (of course, pre-COVID) because then maybe you could have been less lonely, or made a new connection that could bud into romance. Sometimes, it’s as simple as dyeing your hair the color that you think would make you more confident. Ghost lives are different for everyone, but our unique ghost lives still hang like a thread at the back of our heads. 

I thought a lot about my ghost lives this year. As I struggled to make loyal friends and maintain the friendships that I knew were going to fall apart, I began questioning my choice of staying in-state for college. It was easy to think that the calming pitter-patter of rain in the Pacific Northwest and the towering, green deciduous trees could solve all the yellow, pine-tree stagnancy I felt around me. I would even picture the friendly faces I had seen at one of the orientations at an Oregon school as life long friendships I could sustain. I imagined myself going to the beach when the skies were grey and the water foamed in a way that evoked words from the ink in my pen. These images made me resent (sometimes) the choice that I made.

There were some days that my ghost life would haunt me even more. I thought about the time I debated between starting college and taking a gap year. Gap years provide so many possibilities, and I remember I wanted to spend mine working abroad in Europe. I could have lived in a small village with my great aunt, working part-time at the local cafe by the shore of Lake Geneva. I could have basked in the sunlight on various terraces across the whole country; I wish I had that sunkissed tan that showed proof of my time engrossed in neverending travel. Any wanderlust I felt in 2020 wouldn’t have existed if I had taken my gap year the year before, as I had planned. I beat myself up over this missed opportunity, and a ghost life was born.

I told some of my family about my ghost lives, and they told me it was the pandemic that made me feel this way. I’m adamant that with or without the pandemic, I’d still be feeling this way to a degree, but they were kind of right. Ghost lives earn their namesake because they haunt, they linger, and in a world where our traditional “things to do” have disappeared, the phantoms of what could have been had a tighter grip on our minds and hearts.

Of course, wishing for our ghost lives to be a reality is common when our current lives are hard. Everyone thinks of better circumstances when they are engrossed in the mire of bad times. When I experience negative emotions or a bad mindset for a prolonged period of time, wishing that one of my ghost lives would manifest magically in my living space is almost as easy as turning on the TV.

However, ghost lives should never detract from our regular lives because it becomes unhealthy. I am only twenty, and the reality is: I have time. I have time to change my mind, and I have time to choose an alternate path. Ghost lives should be a blip I think about on the days where I’m down, and I’m learning that ghost lives shouldn’t haunt me every waking moment. I want my ghost lives to remind me to take my heart into consideration for every decision I make.

Instead of focusing on what choices I could have made and their potential benefits, I instead evaluate the choices I have made and how they have brought me happiness. Like, being with my significant other. If I hadn’t decided to date him going into college, then I would have probably never gotten into fly fishing or hiked Mt. Yale, nor would I have ghost hunted in a cemetery in the dark hours of the night. Being in state and dealing with difficult people has made me call up friends from high school a lot more often, and I’ve even spent more time with friends that have brought me genuine joy. Anytime I miss speaking French or eating raclette, I can just go home and feel a sense of comfort that being thousands of miles away couldn’t bring me. 

This all may sound trite, but these truly are moments and memories I’m glad I have and choosing real life over what could have been radiates a lot more positive energy, mindfulness, and an ability to be in the present. At the end of the day, ghost lives have taught me that being in the moment requires conscious effort. I must focus on the scent, the sight, and the feeling of walking around or where I am: cuddling with my boyfriend, having his support, being close to my family when I need them. This helps me to appreciate the choices I have made, as they have shown the good that I sometimes fail to see.

I hope as I enter the new year I can let my ghost lives and my real life mingle together every now and then, rather than constantly compete for my attention. I’m determined to fall more in love with the decisions I will make this year. As Kate Hope Day eloquently puts it, I want to be “so grateful that this big, messy, joyous life isn’t a ghost life but mine.”