Why We Live Provisionally
Oct. 13th, 2025 10:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kimberlysteeleThe reality that is never to be acknowledged is the high likelihood that life will go on without much drama for better or for worse. Those who live provisionally dread Newton's old law of inertia: an object in motion tends to stay in motion and an object at rest tends to stay at rest. Revolutions are not pleasant and though many purport to want them, anyone who lived through Mao's upturning of China or the killing fields of Cambodia will tell you that Great Resets are not all they are cracked up to be. I will count my blessings if the lands where I dwell never get to such a state in the duration of my life, because it will give me far more time to meditate on the reasons why people get into revolutions in the first place, like I am about to do here.
There are concrete reasons why we live provisionally, and there is no way I can list even a fraction of them here. I have come up with a few though, and this is what I have deduced.
Living provisionally is a coping mechanism
Living provisionally is a trauma response at its core, a way of shielding oneself from brutal reality via the partitioning of consciousness and the warping, avoidance, and outright deletion of memory. If you are always planning for the future, you don't have to face off with the consequences you have earned in the present, nor do those you perceive around you have to deal with theirs. When I was a kid well before Taylor Swift's time, I naively wished for what would become Taylor Swift's actual life. I wanted to be a big music star. I fixated on this unrealistic future vision of myself because it was far easier than examining my own culpability (as well as the predicaments within my community, society, and culture) in being unliked and unpopular. I thought my talent should have made me popular. I was unwilling to look at my own maladaptation and values, lest I perceive them as warped. I was unable to grok the boiling, seething, foul elements of the milieu in which I grew up in any meaningful way. All I knew was that I was "owed" and that I was helpless to claim my due. Imagining myself singing sold out concert tours helped me to avoid thinking about what would happen if I did not get what I believe I wanted. Heaven was a Taylor Swift-like place in the firmament of female pop princesses. Hell was the continued slide into suburban mediocrity, having to humbly coexist among the same people who bullied and belittled me as a preteen and becoming the same sort of complacent, boring adult I saw everywhere I looked. Living provisionally was my way of soothing the sting becoming just another nobody, going nowhere.
Avoiding failure and the consequences of failure
Nobody likes thinking of themselves as ruined, washed up, or failed. The irony here is that failure is often required to teach us not to pursue the wrong things, lest we actually succeed! Most of us have multiple competencies and talents, and becoming wildly successful at one of them may be the ultimate thief of time from the one we loved the best and should have pursued. I never thought I would be happy about my abject failure to become a popular music artist when I was young, but now that I know a thing or two, I believe I dodged a major bullet by not attaining my teenage dream of major music label success. If I had remained fixated on becoming a pop star, I would have missed out on decades of teaching music. I love my life of decency, order, routine, and uplifting others to take on music as a discipline. I still make plenty of music, and although I don't have anywhere near the fans of a Taylor Swift, I don't feel pressured to produce stinkburger songs out that reek of my insecurities, nor do I have to compete with women half my age to remain relevant. My music is loved because it came from my heart and that is enough. And it is nice that nobody doubts I can sing.
It never occurs to those who think provisionally that failure can wear a convincing mask. You can have all the money and adulation in the world and still be a colossal failure, and you can be as poor and modest as a church mouse and be a raging success. Appearances can be deceiving.
Self-Accountability
There isn't enough self-accountability among provisional livers. There is always some evil group or person preventing Utopia. There is also a weird belief that absolute doom is lurking around the corner. I once knew a woman whom we will call Erika was convinced anyone living in the Chicago suburbs would be sitting under eight feet of water right about now. I am not sure where she got the information that Aurora, Illinois would become the next great flood plane, but she was utterly convinced. This was her reason for moving out of the area. I am not sure if she ever made good on her move.
Though Erika was a hard-working woman struggling to make ends meet and doing a valiant job of it, she was deliberately blind in some key respects. Instead of looking at her anger and fear in meditation -- fear of poverty, loneliness, disability and anger at the system that perpetuated the system, as well as her own complacent role in that which she hated -- she chose to indulge in a fantasy where "evil" got the upper hand. In this fantasy, she would either be dead or floating down a former suburban street on an inflatable raft, and that would mean she would never have to contemplate her own willing participation in the system that was crushing her and would never have to figure out how to lessen her dependency upon it.
Erika needed to ask herself, "What is the worst thing that is still within the realm of likelihood?" One of those outcomes was that her family would be torn apart by poverty and that they might end up in a homeless shelter. In my own case, I have thought through being homeless and I know the worst part of it would be not being able to provide for those who depend upon me. Erika fell out of a highly paid position in the salary class when she became partially disabled. She had become accustomed to the salary class lifestyle and its perks. She needed to explore her fear of never getting that lifestyle back again in meditation. Needless to say, she did not. She clung to her life raft fantasy, never asking what such a symbol might represent in her subconscious.
Who benefits from those who live provisionally?
For every person who lives provisionally, there are at least eighteen with their hands out, hoping to exploit and seduce the provisional liver into giving him or her (or it) their wealth. Capitalism itself depends upon those who live provisionally, not just as sources of cheap labor but as its primary consumers.
The eyes of a provisional liver are always on the prize. The prize is always a few steps away on the horizon. Clever presidents, popes, emperors, and kings figured out long ago that carrots work better than sticks. You can get humans to do nearly anything if you promise them the moon and deliver them a dribble of Utopia here and there, just enough to get them to continue obeying, consuming, and reproducing.
At this very moment, you can bear witness to provisional living slavery all around you. Think of that person (maybe it was you?) who had to own a "good" handbag. One of the most bitter truths to be revealed by 2025's trade and tariff wars was that the "good" brands are made in the exact same Chinese sweatshops as the Walmart bargain crap. That Made in Italy tag means absolutely nothing. The bag may have been finished in Italy with a tassel or some gold paint, but it was technically Made in China.
Most of us trade our time in glorified indentured servitude to an employer, waiting to vent our accumulated Everest of anxiety in a measly week's worth of vacation per year (if we are lucky). We bust ass in order to keep expenses from eating us alive. There may be no escape for us; it is entirely possible we may end up dying the exact way we have lived, with an array of parasites feeding off of every inch of exposed skin. Who benefits from this arrangement? Stockholders, yes. Frozen dinner company CEOs? Yes. Politicians who promised positive change and then pulled the football away like Lucy did to Charlie Brown? Yes. Certainly not us.
Blockades to Utopia
Those who live provisionally do not spend any time in the mirror, asking "Could I be part of the reason my life sucks so hard?" Much of living provisionally is waiting for the perceived circumstances to change so utopia can manifest. "Someday my prince will come", says the romantic, "and that man will fix my life with his giant, potent, perfect penis, his infinite supply of money that magically comes from his altruism, and his perfect, monogamous loyalty to me and me alone". I know a woman who probably says the above to herself. She has been married over a dozen times. Her life gets a little bit worse every time she remarries, and her multiple marriages have caused lifelong collateral damage to everyone involved in them. She is not a lazy person unless we are talking about where it truly counts: her narcolepsy when she is confronted with the statement "Wherever you go, there you are." She is not a happy divorcee. She hates being alone. She knows her view of love is warped. For this, she blames the men and she blames her mother. She knows the primary culprit in her misery (herself) and she runs away as fast as she can, usually into the arms of yet another husband.
Many live provisionally when it comes to their health. Everyone is in pain these days. Many spin their wheels in desperate search of the perfect food, a magic pill, or amazing recreational drug that will erase a lifetime of bad habits compounded by lousy heredity and the hard truth that getting old sucks. They will complain a litany of horrors and frustration to anyone who will listen, and the worst of the bitching will be inflicted upon their loved ones. Nobody knows the trouble they've seen! Yet we all die. This is Meatworld reality. Complaining vociferously helps to ease the tormented mind just as sucking on a virgin's carotid helps the undead to continue waking up night after night.
Putting stuff off
For those who live provisionally, there is no real belief the future can be changed by an action in the present moment. That is why they do not bother trying. There is an old joke about not doing the dishes because they are just going to get dirty the next time you eat that is applicable here. I recently criticized a fellow Substacker who made a hysterical post about how there would be no farms in 20 years because of current politics. His hyperbole was his fear manifesting itself so he would not have to take positive action: he made no mention of avoiding meat that wasn't locally sourced and butchered from his local farmer, making sure to get to his local farmer's market, or growing his own vegetables. No, it was far easier to sit in the easy chair and make dire proclamations about the end of farming.
I find it amusing when people claim they would be more charitable if they came into money. For instance, let us take the hypothetical example of a man who wins the Lotto, having promised in the past that he would pay for the orphans to have a proper Christmas if only he had tons of money. No, he wouldn't, or at least if he did come into a great fortune, the local orphanage would be low on the list, long after building the obscenely large McMansion, buying at least two fancy cars, and hiring a personal chef. If your charitable nature only emerges when you have stadium owner money, it is not exactly a force to be reckoned with.
I return to the fantasies of my young self, a self who said "If only I could be rich and famous, I would gain self-worth." No, I would not. The more people who love-bomb you for some fleeting trait such as your looks, the less self-worth you will have. The music industry has more plants than my local garden center on Mother's Day, and there is barely a shred of self-worth among them. Self-worth does not involve cutting off your nose, chipping away at your jaw bone, and going on Ozempic in an insane race to be fairest of them all.
The hard truth that provisional living avoids is that change happens now. It is put up or shut up; now or never. When it comes to the outside world, honesty is overrated. Maybe I will write an essay about that at some point -- in my own case, I wear metaphorical masks not entirely for myself, but mostly for the benefit of others who could not handle me in my raw, unfinished states. Honesty is priceless when it comes to the self, and that is where it truly matters. In order to stop living provisionally, we have to call ourselves on our own bullsh*t.
Hey! I am going to be taking a short writing hiatus from October 25-31. As some of you already know, Halloween/Samhain is my favorite time of year and this year I have the luxury (thanks very much in part to my generous Ogham and Substack donors) of five days off from teaching music after this year's big recital. I am celebrating my upcoming book, Sacred Homemaking: A Magical Approach to Tidying (Aeon Books, summer 2026) being in the copyediting phase. I thank you all for being such loyal readers and commenters. Please pray I get a spot of good weather so I can get to the forest preserve for one of my epic walks!
