INTERVIEWER

There is a quotation in Missing Out that haunts me, from Randall Jarrell— “The ways we miss our lives are life.” What does this mean to you?

(...)

PHILLIPS

I’m saying there could be a comfort in that line. And the comfort would be something like, You don’t have to worry too much about trying to have the lives you think you’re missing. Don’t be tyrannized by the part of yourself that’s only interested in elsewhere.

http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/6286/the-art-of-nonfiction-no-7-adam-phillips