Why Life Can Never Be What You Want It To Be

Why Life Can Never Be What You Want It To Be

There’s a popular saying: “Life is what you make of it.” In reality, that phrase is little more than a comforting lie. The hard truth is that life is defined and limited by the universe’s unforgiving rules—rules that make real freedom, safety, and satisfaction impossible. Here’s why life can never truly be what you want it to be:

No Built-In Safety
The most obvious flaw in existence is the total absence of inbuilt safety. From birth to death, living beings are exposed to an environment filled with threats: disease, predation, injury, starvation, natural disasters, and random bad luck. There’s nothing stopping catastrophe from wiping you out in an instant. No protective system ensures your survival. The universe is indifferent, with no concern for suffering or loss. The only “rule” is that anything can be destroyed at any time.

The Illusion of Ownership
Nothing in existence truly belongs to anything. Ownership, whether of your body, your home, your thoughts, or your time, is always temporary and fragile. Every “possession” can be lost, stolen, decayed, or destroyed. Even your atoms are only briefly assembled before being scattered back into the environment. The idea that something can belong to you is just a comforting illusion. In the end, everything returns to dust.

Scarcity and Limited Resources
Resources are always limited—energy, food, water, space, time. No system, biological or artificial, can ever have infinite supplies. Scarcity breeds competition, conflict, and suffering. Living beings must constantly fight to survive, to claim enough of what they need, and that fight never ends. The environment offers no mercy or fairness; it’s a zero-sum game where some win at the direct expense of others.

The Severe Limits of Biology
Biology is a prison with walls made of flesh and bone. The human body, like all living bodies, is fragile and vulnerable to injury, infection, aging, and decay. Senses are limited, minds can be easily broken, and abilities are narrowly constrained. While the environment contains wonders—flight, the depths of the ocean, extremes of heat and cold—humans are locked out by default. Most of the world is hostile or lethal, and even the small part that isn’t can become dangerous at any moment. Biology imposes endless restrictions and offers little in return.

Life Demands Killing and Destruction
Every living thing survives at the expense of others. Animals eat animals, plants are ripped up and consumed, bacteria dissolve the dead. To live, you must kill, directly or indirectly. Suffering and death are built into the very structure of existence. There is no way to avoid harming other beings; it’s a fundamental requirement of life.
Physics Sets Ultimate Limits
The universe itself places hard boundaries on what is possible. The speed of light is a strict limit—no object, message, or simulation can move faster. This rules out instant travel, instant communication, or massive real-time simulations. Even if you could build unimaginably advanced technology, these basic physical laws cannot be changed or bypassed. They permanently restrict what can ever be achieved.

Inevitable Breakdown and Decay
Everything falls apart. Entropy—the tendency for systems to break down—cannot be stopped. Bodies age and die, machines corrode and fail, memories fade, civilizations collapse. All creation is temporary, all achievement is fleeting. No amount of effort can prevent the relentless advance of decay and destruction.

The Hard Limit of Technology
Technology, for all its promise, is ultimately boxed in by the universe’s rules. You can only shrink transistors so far before you hit the atomic scale. You can only extract so much energy before you run out of fuel. Heat builds up, materials fail, information gets lost. There is no infinite progress—just a long march towards the next wall, followed by an inevitable decline.

Conclusion
The dream of a life shaped entirely by your desires is just that—a dream. The universe is not built to accommodate hope, safety, or satisfaction. It is built on scarcity, decay, and competition. Your body, your mind, and your world are defined by limits you can never overcome. Life isn’t about what you want; it’s about surviving as best you can in a system that is fundamentally hostile, fragile, and indifferent. To exist is to be forced to play a losing game with rules you didn’t choose and cannot change.
That’s why life can never be what you want it to be. And that’s the truth, whether anyone wants to admit it or not.