- a provisional life is lived in anticipation of something better, new, or “more real”. - everything you don’t like about your life will improve just as soon as something else changes – but change never comes, because the psychic protection of the provisional life is in the *fantasy* of something better without “the hard work and hard choices inseparable from personal change in the real world”. - [[{1.4a3c} puella aeterna and puer aeternus are stuck in a childish worldview|puella and puer]] are living provisional lives. - see highlights: - [[dysfunctional merry-go-round of self-inflicted crisis that will change as soon as something else happens]] - [[people who are living the provisional life are constantly impelled to explain how the circumstances of their life... conspire to prevent them from living a normal responsible existence]] - [[anyone who refuses to experience life must stifle his desire to live]]