Do you think Michael Jackson would choose the same life again if he had the chance?
It’s 2am I’m writing this while crashing out (again) after watching old clips of him. I’ve been thinking about him a lot lately. He’s the only person where, when his name comes up, I get this overwhelming feeling that the world is so so cruel and unfair. We truly did not deserve such a beautiful soul.
I really believe he loved making music and performing more than anything else. It felt like that was the one place he could fully express himself and actually feel understood. He talked a lot about wanting to create something immortal through music and leaving something beautiful behind for people. I do think he was able to achieve that cause even now people who weren’t alive during his peak love him, study him, and want to learn more about him. We still feel emotionally connected to him in a way that can’t be explained.
But the level fame he reached came with this isolating and painful cost. The bigger he got the harder people tried to tear him down. Someone so gifted and carrying so much weight at the same time, I can’t even imagine what that must have felt like.
And that brings me to the question I keep coming back to. If he had a second chance at life, do you think he would rather have lived a private life with a normal childhood, or would he choose the same path again because of the legacy he was able to leave behind? And I don't mean fame for fame's sake. I mean having the ability to move people, change music, and leave behind such an impact for the world as both an artist and a humanitarian.
Do you think he found real fulfillment in what he gave the world, and believed it was all worth it in the end? Did the joy he got from giving people his art outweigh everything he had to go through to become who he became? Or was the cost of becoming “Michael Jackson”just too painful for any one person to carry?
EDIT:
Thank you all for the comments, it gave me a lot of insight. I think what I’ve concluded is that his life is not something we can rewrite or debate. It doesn't really matter what we believe he would have chosen, or whether he would have wanted a different life or a normal childhood. We should respect that this was the life he lived, and he lived it as fully and as best as he could within the circumstances he was given. It’s everyone’s first time being alive.
My question wasn’t about what he would change, but if he would choose to relive his exact life as Michael Jackson or start over with a normal childhood, never knowing that life at all. Whether you believe that despite everything he went through, he found fulfillment and happiness in his lifetime through what he was able to accomplish and create. But that turns an entire lived experience into a thought experiment we can’t analyze from the outside. So instead of trying to rewrite possible versions of his life, I think the point is simply to acknowledge the life that actually existed.
He did say in interviews that he would do it all over again, but we’ll never know what path his life would have taken if he had grown up differently, because that version of him wouldn’t really be the same person. His identity, art, and perception of life were shaped by the very experiences we’re trying to hypothetically remove.
The more meaningful thing is just respecting that it was his life, rather than trying to imagine what version of it would’ve been “better.”