“I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive.” – Henry Miller
While you are looking at this screen and reading my words, I’d like to ask you a question.
Are you alive?
I am willing to know if you can answer me with a “yes.”
By using the word alive I’m not mentioning your physical existence but your whole life and every aspect of it. Wait and feel this breathe which you are taking in right now.
Recall some of the best experiences of your life when you felt like things were perfect and just couldn’t get better.
Does that make you smile? If not, recall something better. That was the time when you were alive. The time which was priceless.
Now focus on your current life. Is it the same or has something changed? I don’t whether you are as happier as you were then, but I guess that things might have changed a lot.
If you’re still as much happy as you used to be, then its a blessing. But if you aren’t, then there’s a reason behind it – life changes.
Life doesn’t always remain the same
Life changes unexpectedly. It’s unpredictable. You can’t even tell what might happen in the next moment.
In our lifetime, we face successes and failures, we feel joys and sorrows, sometimes we lose our loved ones or meet some new people, we go through financial barriers, and yet we manage to carry on somehow.
As they say – life goes on.
But I have a disagreement with that phrase. I don’t want life to just go on, instead I wish we could live every second of our lives. I also know that isn’t possible, but to some extent it can be done.
We’ve got this life to live, not just to exist and let it pass.
Sometimes I think we’re dead even if we claim to be alive. Our heart keeps beating just like the clock keeps ticking, without any difference. With every passing beat and tick, we lose life. We all pass our life pretty much like that.
Sometimes we aren’t really living
Everyone dies at some point in life. Not really though. But don’t our pains kill us by making our lives seem meaningless?
You die when you face the worst tragedies imaginable, when you have no control over what happens to you, or when when you’re forced to live in despair due to some painful incident. Yes you die when life seems to have no value of its own.
There comes a point when you feel like your being alive or dead doesn’t even make any difference. However, you still deserve to live with a head held high and can proudly wear a smile on your face.
After all, you don’t want to be wondering about how you had wasted the one life which you had got while lying on your deathbed. It might be your worst regret ever and you won’t even get a second chance to correct it.
You aren’t really living if
- You are too busy judging people and don’t even make any minor attempts to understand them.
- You don’t appreciate the small things in life and keep waiting for the heaven of your dreams.
- You dwell in fear and don’t follow your heart’s voice.
- You seek the wrong and unworthy things, and hardly recognize the worth of the ones which you’ve got.
- You have got enough excuses for not doing things, and blames for the outcomes too.
- You waste your time in proving yourself to others, even though it is useless.
- You take criticism too seriously and ultimately lose your motivation for moving on further.
- You don’t trust yourself and are easily shaken by the outer voices.
- You quit before you dare to start and don’t take the leap of faith.
- You don’t think that you’re born with a right to inspire, and keep yourself from bringing a change in others lives.
- You keep waiting for your someday to arrive, and don’t even start.
- You always underestimate your own identity, and keep waiting to be liked by others.
- You hold yourself back due to lack of resources, and fail to take a stand for yourself or others.
- You always keep comparing yourself to others, and then become stressed.
- You don’t really define every term in your life, and look at things as they have already been defined by the world.
- You don’t understand the value of having values, and don’t have any principles of your own.
- You don’t really have any priorities, and fail to hold on to what you value the most.
“What do we live for, if not to make life less difficult for each other?”
– George Eliot
But if you would ask me to summarize these in a short sentence, then it would be – do what makes you and others smile.
If both the cases contradict, use your wisdom to find a way out and do what is right. If you say that you’re alive, mean it. If that seems something difficult, try to do whatever you can to live happily.
Think about death
Now tell me whether you want to be among those people who don’t realize the value of their life until death looks at them in the eye? Probably not.
We have a bad habit of taking our life for granted. We behave as if we are immortal.
You cannot really predict that which of your goodbyes will be the last, or what will be your last breakfast. At any moment death might strike you like a thunderstorm, and you still live as if you are unaware of this fact.
Think that it is now. The moment when you are going to die.You are unable to breathe, your heart is choking, you are losing control over your body, and want to escape this feeling somehow but you can’t.
You are thinking about everything that you will leave behind, your family, friends, money, hard work, respect, and much more.
You are thinking of your regrets, conflicts, relations, and some other things which you had made by yourself.
Now while you are dying in this moment, you try to define your whole life within a few seconds which you have got, but can you? Maybe you’ll know the meaning and value of your life in that moment, but what’s the use of it now?
Yes you might die in peace, but wouldn’t it have been better if you had lived in peace?
You stay helpless like a loser, aware of the truth that everything’s gone now. You can’t move or say anything anymore. All you can do is to wait for the second of your departure.
You slowly experience some kind of blankness in your body, your eyelids get closer to each other and hiding what you can see, against your will, a drop of tear rushes out from the corner of you eye and then…silence. A full stop at the end of the whole journey of your life.
Over.
This was your life, which you get once, and which you lose once. The thing which was most valuable to you got snatched at once.
But guess what? You are lucky enough to be alive. You are able to read this, and still have a lot of time left to do your own thing and give your life a meaning. Come back to reality, doesn’t everything look anew after knowing what death might be like?
Now learn to live
Don’t be among those people who will try to find the meaning of their life at the last moment of their death. Instead make it meaningful from this moment. Turn your life where you want it to go, and put in it everything that makes it look beautiful to you.
Exploit every second and kill every moment. Give your life the value which it deserves by making everything the best for yourself.
Conclusion
The thought of death makes you realize the value of life. It makes you appreciate every breath which you have been bestowed with, and inspires you to make your life more meaningful.
Do you think that the thought of death can somewhat inspire a regard for life? What is it that inspires you to live your life to the fullest?
I’d be happy if you take some time to leave a comment.