People on the internet talk about “giving main character energy” or “feeling like the main character” and I think it’s a pretty interesting idea. Have you ever looked at yourself from the outside and wondered what kind of story you’re in? Maybe it’s a comedy, a tragedy, a romance… hopefully not a murder mystery or thriller!

But what if we took that concept to heart? What kind of character would you want to be?

It’s difficult being a hero, so maybe that’s not the role you’d choose. We writers know that the most interesting sort of protagonist is one that feels real—a character with both flaws and virtues, ideals and doubts. And we know the best way to drive the hero’s story forward is to throw a lot of hardships their way, pushing them out of their comfortable stagnant beginning, propelling them through decisions with life-altering consequences in the middle, and plunging them through the darkest hour of their life with circumstances that look too bleak to be survivable… all in order to tell a good story.

If you were one of your protagonists, would you think all that suffering was worth it? Would you arrive at the resolution of your story and feel thankful for the struggle of the preceding chapters?

But that’s what our lives are like, right? We go through crazy stuff, and we might hate it, but sometimes we look back on the deepest hurts and feel a mixture of regret and gratefulness. Somehow, those two can exist side by side.

I think about the person I wanted to be when I was a teenager, a college student, etc. Thankful doesn’t begin to describe how I feel about the actual trajectory my life took instead of my idealized path.

I think we are living in a story. But we don’t shape our own journey any more than a book character does. The choices we make have meaning not because we choose them, but because they fit within a bigger narrative. How does that all work out with billions of people making millions of choices every day? It wouldn’t… if every one of us were a “main character”. Some people are villains. Others think they’re the villains and they’re actually just those side characters revolving in a merry-go-round of self-inflicted misery for comic effect.

In the end, there can only be one main character.

If I were to choose, it wouldn’t be me.