You are here; here you are

On self-doubt, regret, and the sheer dumb luck of our existence

Dear friend,

Last week, I was hiking with a friend when our conversation turned to the topic of regret. Perhaps the sudden bout of rain inspired this dismal subject matter, compounded by my failure to bring an umbrella and his decision to wear Converse and jeans for the 3.7-mile loop. We were shriveled and dispirited; I was sorry to have suggested the hike in the first place. But we were 45 minutes away from the parking lot, and all we could do was trudge on.

Life, my friend said, is a series of regrets. We live, we fuck up, we learn—but even if we grow wiser, we are condemned to spend our lives wallowing in a steaming, putrid swamp of our errors.

A few years ago, I would have agreed. I spent many of my earlier years locked in a silent battle against “Better Ashley,” a version of myself who was smarter, prettier, funnier, more beloved, less shy. Better Ashley was high school valedictorian and could shotgun a beer. Better Ashley knew how to code. Better Ashley would probably be an incoming summer analyst at Goldman Sachs.

If suffering derives from the gap between desire and reality, then Better Ashley was the source of my misery: an impossible paragon that could have been my reality if only I hadn’t failed, if only I had chosen a different path. I regretted what I tried unsuccessfully; I regretted what I didn’t try, even if I knew it wasn’t something I actually wanted. In short, I desired to be everything I was not, without truly knowing who I was at all.

I wish I could go back and tell younger Ashley: hey, kiddo, trust me, you’re alright. But instead, I’ll write this to my current self, and to you:

You are here, with all your glorious faults, your mediocre talents, your juvenile intellect, your unbounded earnestness. And that is good, and beautiful, and more than enough. An imperfect world needs imperfect people to tend to it; you do not need to be excellent, only courageous and kind.

I’m still internalizing this myself, of course. I experience frequent bouts of self-doubt. But I have an inkling that as long as we strive toward “goodness,” however we each define it, we’ll become who we are meant to be.

Whenever I worry that I’m the “wrong path,” I return to this Taoist parable:

“There is a Taoist story of an old farmer who had worked his crops for many years. One day his horse ran away. Upon hearing the news, his neighbors came to visit. “Such bad luck,” they said sympathetically.

“Maybe,” the farmer replied.

The next morning the horse returned, bringing with it three other wild horses. “How wonderful,” the neighbors exclaimed.

“Maybe,” replied the old man.

The following day, his son tried to ride one of the untamed horses, was thrown, and broke his leg. The neighbors again came to offer their sympathy for what they called his “misfortune.”

“Maybe,” answered the farmer.

The day after, military officials came to the village to draft young men into the army. Seeing that the son's leg was broken, they passed him by. The neighbors congratulated the farmer on how well things had turned out.

“Maybe,” said the farmer.”

Fortune may be a Trojan Horse; failure may be a blessing in disguise. Only in hindsight can we see how the seemingly-disjointed points in our lives form a cohesive narrative, how every mistake and misfortune was a vital part of our becoming. I doubt I’d be happier as Better Ashley, especially if I were working for Goldman Sachs. There is nothing to regret.

If you were standing at the base of the Palo Alto foothills last Friday, you may have seen two figures shuffling down the last hill at sunset. You may have seen them pause at the bottom, watching the sun rim the mountains, inhaling the earthy petrichor. Or you may not have noticed them at all if you were busy doing the same.

It’s moments like these, after a rain-drenched hike or a particularly trying period of our lives, when we remember to savor the sheer dumb luck of our existence. We are each a one-in-four-hundred-trillion miracle. Of all the infinite dimensions of the universe, it’s a wonder we ended up here, on this planet, at this moment, together.

You are—and always have been—exactly where you need to be.

With love,

Ash

---

(P.S. I’d love to hear from you! Tell me what you enjoyed, what you disagreed with, what you want to know more about. My DMs are always open on Twitter (@ashleydzhang), or you can comment on the Substack post. Thank you for reading. ❤️)

---

A little extra spiritual nourishment:

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

— Mary Oliver, “Wild Geese”