Life imitates art

It didn't feel like anything.... until it did

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately and I don’t even know when it started, it just stayed in my head and now it keeps coming back at random times, like I’ll be watching something or just sitting doing nothing and suddenly this thought comes up again, life imitates art, and the more I sit with it the more it feels true but also not in the way people usually mean it.

And don’t read this like it’s some proper article or anything, just listen for a second like I’m talking and figuring it out while saying it, because I don’t fully have it sorted either.

I think most of us didn’t actually learn how to live from real life, we picked it up from everything we kept watching, movies, songs, reels, random clips, even those small scenes that stay in your head for no reason, all of that slowly builds this idea in your mind of how life is supposed to feel, not how it works, but how it should feel.

And you don’t notice it happening, it’s not like you decide one day that you’re going to expect more from life, it just happens slowly, like you start thinking moments should feel something, like conversations should have weight, like relationships should make sense in a clean way, and when they don’t, it feels off even if nothing is actually wrong.

Like tell me if this has happened to you, you’re in a moment, something normal, maybe even good, but instead of just being there you’re almost watching it from outside, like your brain is checking if this feels right or if it matches something you’ve seen before, and if it doesn’t, it feels empty in a way you can’t explain.

That’s the part that messes with me, because nothing is actually missing, it just feels like it is.

And I’ve caught myself doing this so many times, expecting something to feel bigger than it is, expecting people to say the right things at the right time, expecting things to just click, and when they don’t, there’s this small drop inside you that doesn’t even make sense, because who said it was supposed to be like that.

No one did, but somewhere along the way you started believing it anyway.

And I don’t think art is the problem, if anything it’s the reason we understand our own feelings better, like sometimes you don’t even know what you’re feeling until you see it somewhere else and then suddenly it makes sense, so it helps, a lot.

But at the same time it also sets this silent standard, like life should feel meaningful all the time, like every phase should lead somewhere clear, like everything should make sense when you look at it, and real life just doesn’t work like that.

Most of life is just normal, confusing, random, nothing special, and I think we struggle with that more than we admit.

If I’m being honest, some of the moments that matter to me now didn’t feel like anything when they were happening, they were just regular days, nothing deep, nothing worth stopping for, and yet when I look back now, they feel important, like they meant something even though I didn’t realise it then.

So maybe that’s where this whole thing flips, maybe life doesn’t actually imitate art while you’re in it, maybe it only starts to look like something later, when you look back at it and connect things and give it meaning yourself.

So it’s not that your life has to feel like something all the time, maybe it just becomes something later.

And I think that takes a bit of pressure off, because you don’t have to sit there wondering why a moment doesn’t feel like anything, or why things aren’t hitting the way you expected, maybe they’re not supposed to right now.

Maybe you’re just in it.

And I’m saying this to you but I’m also saying it to myself, because I do this a lot, I keep expecting things to feel a certain way and then getting confused when they don’t, like I’m missing something.

But maybe I’m not missing anything, maybe I’m just trying to feel something that only makes sense later.

So yeah, I don’t have a proper ending for this, I’m still thinking about it, still catching myself doing it, still trying to understand it a bit more each time.

But if you’re reading this and you’ve ever felt like your life isn’t hitting the way you thought it would, like something is missing but you can’t explain what, maybe it’s not actually missing.

Maybe it’s just not time for it to make sense yet.

And maybe that’s fine.

If you’ve been reading my work for a while, you probably know that I write these pieces slowly and honestly. Sometimes it takes hours just to find the right way to explain a single thought. But I keep doing it because this space and this community mean a lot to me.

If something in this piece stayed with you, made you think differently, or simply made you feel a little less alone, and you ever feel like supporting my writing, you can do that here: Buy me a coffee.