By Dina Aldabbagh

In that dream life of yours, what does a Tuesday look like? That’s what I’m asking you. Not who will be there. Not what city you will live in. Not how much money you will make. I’m asking you what feels ordinary? In that dream life of yours, what is no longer considered spectacular, but what is the baseline?

I don’t care to ask you about any specifics, because we don’t know any of that — and overattaching to specific details can make you miss the thing that’s looking you right in your face, asking to be received. Instead, I’m asking you what the essence of your life is. What feels normal? 

What are your habits? Who calls you? Who’s over for dinner? What’s on the table? What style of paintings cover your walls? What neighborhood are you walking through? How does the day open? And how does it close? What are the values you live by? What kinds of conversations are normal? What does it feel like?

It’s normal to think that whatever dreams you have — be that the job, the relationship, the car — will solve the problem that is the insatiable hunger for something more out of life. However, I urge you to remember that if you ever get to that life, it won’t scream in your face, “You’ve made it!” — it’ll whisper it. Every single desire you once had will just be there…quietly. It won’t beg you to notice it. It won’t feel like validation. It’ll just feel normal. 

It’s important to remember at this point just how much you truly have. It’s easy to forget that the baseline you now live from was once the thing you only wished would be added to your life. 

You see, we think that when we get our desires, that it’ll be this grand entrance — an obvious shift that we won’t help but notice. It’s not quite so theatrical. It’s much more like someone who lets themselves into the house and who you just recognize as family. Whenever that desire does come into your life, it won’t feel foreign to you — it’ll feel familiar, already known by you.

This makes it that much easier to undervalue its presence, and that much more important to pay attention and be grateful for the things that are quietly stable in our lives. For these things are not quiet because they aren’t important, just because they’re secure. At some point, that desire felt out of reach to you, so when it no longer feels aspirational, you don’t always understand that that is the exact thing you wanted. 

The truth is just that in the process between first wanting the thing and it suddenly being in your atmosphere is that you became the person for whom it was normal. Therefore, it’s just here. It’s not screaming at you. It’s just ordinary. But don’t forget the meaningfulness of this ordinary thing. 

You may realize it on your drive to the doctor’s, when you look at the landscape of the city you now live in under the sunset. You may realize it when you spend an hour wandering through the shoe store, picking out whatever shoes your heart desires and listening to your audiobook with no urgency. You may realize it when you cook in your kitchen for hours, listening to music that feels like home.

And none of this will beg to be appreciated — only the version of you who once did not have it will beg you to. That version knows what it’s like to go without. Further, they know the mental noise of having to think about it all the time. It is a blessing to now not have to think about it. They say, “What does a healthy man want? 1000 things. What does a sick man want? One thing.”

It’s a blessing to wake up without bodily pain. Just as it is to have friends around who you know you can count on to grab brunch with you on Sunday. Just as it is to be picked up from the airport by a loved one. Oh, what a blessing it is to not have to think about what you do not have.

That’s the biggest one of all: the ordinariness of a high baseline of life. What a rich person you are if you do not have to constantly think about that which you do not have. When you can go through your day without the mental noise of what’s missing from your life, you are freed. Your energy and time are unoccupied.

When you no longer give energy to thinking about what problems you have, you are liberated to live ordinarily. Suddenly, it feels like you are fueled to do all sorts of things. Once you are no longer meditating on all that is wrong with you and your life, you will be shocked at how much you feel able to give yourself to. And consequently, how much happens and advances in your life.

The focus on lacking something in yourself and your life costs you much more energy than you can even imagine. This is why the “dream life” is quiet — because it was never the loud part. The thing that’s screaming at you is the voice that says, “You’re missing X,” “You need to be more Y,” or “Life wouldn’t be so hard if it wasn’t for Z.” The dream life, then, is in a way not the addition of something, but rather the subtraction of the part of you that reminds you what you do not have. 

The dream life won’t feel like a roller coaster or a movie, it’ll feel like a Tuesday without any loud problems.