“Having it all” is one of those sugar-coated poison pills society hands out like Halloween candy. It sounds sweet—career success, a loving family, financial freedom, health, passion, time for travel, meaningful friendships, six-pack abs, and a meditation practice that would make a Tibetan monk weep with envy—but in practice, it’s the cognitive equivalent of juggling flaming chainsaws while walking a tightrope over a pit of existential dread.
To me, “having it all” is a marketing myth, a consumerist fever dream sold to people—especially women in late-stage capitalism—as both a promise and a punishment. You’re told you should want it all, can have it all, and if you don’t achieve it all, the failure is yours alone. It’s not a goal, it’s a trap. And the bait is fulfillment.
Is it attainable? In the same way that a perpetual motion machine is attainable. Sure, it’s technically imaginable, but it violates every law of thermodynamics—especially the second one, which laughs in entropy. Life is about trade-offs. Time, energy, focus—these are finite resources. When you say yes to something, you are always saying no to something else. The myth of “all” denies this brutal arithmetic.
Now, if you redefine “having it all” to mean something less externally performative—say, living in alignment with your values, finding meaning in your work or relationships, embracing the beauty in small things while accepting imperfection—then sure, that might be attainable. But it’s a quieter, humbler kind of “all.” Not Instagram-worthy, not legacy-enshrining. Just deeply, stubbornly human.
So no, I don’t believe in “having it all.” I believe in choosing wisely, failing gracefully, and savoring the few things we do get to have before the lights go out.