The Unrepeatability of Life

At some point in my 20's or 30's I realized that my unwitting attitude towards the unrepeatable nature of life wasn't aligned with reality. On more than one occasion I found myself surprised at situations where I didn't get a second chance. When I stepped back and thought about it, there was no rational reason I should have expected second chances in those situations. But unconsciously, I did have that expectation. Why?

The best theory I ever came up with was the way my mind had been shaped by video games. Over and over, if I died too many times in the game, all I needed was another quarter, or to own the game, to keep on playing. I came to expect that reality worked like that somehow.

But of course it doesn't work that way. There are consequences to our actions, and most of the time nothing short of miracle will undo those consequences.

What's doubly amazing to me about this pattern in myself is that 1) our family never owned a videogame or videogame console; 2) growing up I didn't have the amount of quarters it would take for me to hammer home the message that life is a repeatable, disposable thing like it sometimes seems it is; and 3) when I was growing up, video games weren't ubiquitous like they are today. Is this other assumption of repeatability also ubiquitous today?

What about you? Have you internalized this sense that everything in life is repeatable? Do you wordlessly assume that if you fail this current situation, there will always be more chances? How do you combat this feeling, and align your life with what is, instead of what you wish was?