Some time ago, I listened to a podcast interview with the Swedish actress Eva Röse. When I was a kid, in the Swedish version of the Mickey Mouse Club, there was Alice, Johan and Eva. Every Friday evening, my parents made me TV dinner and let me watch these lively youths present loud American cartoons, and I loved it. Three of my childhood idols, in a sense, that have taken different paths in life since. Alice is now in the environmental party and the Swedish minister of culture. Johan is a rather famous comedian and TV presenter. And Eva, she became an actress.
In the interview, she was talking about her character in the play she was currently rehearsing for. She said:
To make it brief, it’s a woman who has to choose. She feels locked in and she has made choices in life that she just has to live with. Just like you can feel yourself, that you have to carry the sorrow of the choices you have made. Even if it is an active choice, there is always a sorrow over what wasn’t chosen. The feeling that you aren’t really completely free and, like: “Yes but I do want I want and I follow where the day leads me, follow the wind, it’s Goa here and Ibiza there, and I’m just awesome”. Yes, but every time you sit down on the plane to a destination, you opt out of others. And that, in a way, at my age, in the middle of life, with all the choices I make – and everything I’ve opted out of. There is something painful and very beautiful in that, if you can accept it.
And isn’t that true? I feel short of breath, sometimes, when I think about the impact of some of the choices that I have made in life. Cross-roads passed, sometimes very deliberately, others rushed through without realizing the significance until years later.
Of course, regret is easy to feel. But often, mourning paths not taken is not fair. Instead, honour the choices I have made. A touch of sorrow, maybe, yes, but then. Seeing how delicate the moment is that I am in right now. I could have been anywhere. The frail beauty in existing at all.
Katja Malmborg 