To Live Life, If Not Today, When?
The best time to live is now.
Apologies if this is triggering, but I need to say it anyhow. You could die tomorrow.
Death tends to be the most terrifying topic for many people. The thought of no longer being, the questions of what – if anything – might come after this life has led to debates, arguments, and wars. Somehow, we still ignore that it’s inevitable. Life ends at death. That’s the nature of every living thing that we know.
You’re born. You live. Then, you die. Birth and death are, in and of themselves, quick and almost equally unpredictable (no due date or expiration date is ever guaranteed).
What does it mean to live? This question has stumped philosophers, theologians, scientists, and everyday people for millennia. The quest for the meaning of life has driven people to do both amazing and terrible things.
What if the meaning of life is ludicrously simple? I think that it might be. More and more, I believe that the meaning of life is simply TO LIVE. But what does it mean to live?
What does it mean to live life?
More than once, I’ve written about my belief that there are three primary ways people choose to live their lives.
The first, and most predominant, is to let life live you. Arguably, this is what society prefers of us. Don’t rock the boat. Follow the prescribed path, and be a cog in the machine of society. Adapt yourself accordingly to be “normal”.
The second is to curl up in a ball and await death. This is a perspective of seeing life as naught but struggle, futility, pain, and the like. It can be both literal and figurative. Focusing on preparing in this life for an afterlife is the same as making few to no choices for fear of pain and suffering.
The third option is to take the wheel and drive life. This is when you make choices and decisions to do things, have experiences, learn things, and so on. You apply active conscious awareness to do, have, be, and experience things. In other words, you choose to live.
Truth is, you will shift between these in your life. Everyone does. That’s because of change, the one and only constant in the universe. Change will come unexpectedly, sometimes subtly, and sometimes abruptly. When it happens, it can and will put you off your game. You will be, as such, shifted between these three ways to live life.
They are also not the only three ways to live life, just the most common and easily identifiable.
Much of this comes from your perspective of and approach to life. Do you see life as a negative, painful struggle – or – a positive, unpredictable challenge? The answer might be yes, both, or yes, depending on x, y, or z.
While no two lives are the same, and no two people have the exact same perception, all of us have the same capability to choose what our lives will look like and how we approach that.
It’s all about choosing and deciding
When all is said and done, to live life is a matter of choices and decisions. When you are actively choosing and deciding things for your life, you position yourself to experience and grow or avoid and stagnate.
A great deal of this comes down to fear.
Fear can be healthy. When our ancient ancestors needed to survive harsher extremes, fear kept them alive. Fear was how we knew to avoid lions, steer clear of cliffs and swift currents, and protect ourselves from death.
To all intents and purposes, human beings have conquered the world and its dangers. Most of the threats to us no longer come from everyday facets of living, but instead come from other humans and elemental and environmental extremes.
Hence, nearly all our modern fears are intangible. Few, if any of our fears, have anything to do with death as a result of the thing you’re afraid of. Mostly, our fears are about suffering. More than that, they’re about a fear of perceived suffering.
What if I do “X” and fail? How will that make me look? Will I be rejected, scorned, and mocked for that? How awful will that make me feel? How much will I suffer? What other consequences might come of that? If any of those questions are familiar to you, then you know intangible fears.
The biggest issue that comes of this is not choosing to live life. Take no chances, avoid certain experiences, and keep from coming to harm and experiencing suffering. That, of course, leads to a whole other form of suffering. Now you question what could have been, what might have been, what you’re missing, and second-guessing and doubting because of fear keeping you – and how you choose to live life – at bay.
To live life in fear is a choice
Lots of things can and will get in the way of making choices and decisions for how you live your life. This includes not only fears of suffering due to intangibles, but also living entirely according to societal expectations and norms.
For some people, there is happiness and contentment in living a life of rote, routine, and habit. They find happiness and joy in this, and that is their way of living life. The experiences of those choices sustain and drive them with contentment and a sense of purpose and self. More power to you if that’s your experience.
For many people, the daily grind is exactly that. A grind. Slogging through for the off-hours. Do a job that bores you to tears because you must work to participate in society, earn your living, and so on. Accept that, because that’s all there is, that’s how it’s always been and always will be and blah blah blah.
The current “norm” of working at your job 5 days a week, 8 hours a day, is only about a century old. How we each live life changes frequently. Thanks to technology and automation, the tools for choices and decisions to take the wheel and drive life have expanded exponentially. So much so that many “traditional” and “conservative” forces feel lost and are grasping to maintain a status quo.
One way they do that is by weaponizing fear.
“They” will take your way of life from you. “Those people” will harm you and your way of life. Be wary of the technology because it’ll destroy everything you know. All of these are weaponized messages of fear.
When you allow fear to determine your life, you are likely to miss out on its many possibilities and potential.
If not today, when?
My mother-in-law very recently passed away. I in no way wish to speak ill of the dead, but her life illuminates the point of this essay. To live life, if not now, when?
Knowing she had a finite time remaining, she let her fear keep her from having what might have been some amazing experiences before the end. My wife observed that for most of her life, fear kept her from doing things and having experiences. She spent her last days in fear of both life and death because she frequently avoided making choices or decisions.
All of us will die. Sorry, I know that’s harsh. Yet it’s the truth. You, as you perceive yourself in this time, that place, and that body, will eventually end. Like everyone else, you were born, and you will die.
Between birth and death, however, is life. Life is what we have, here and now. It includes past experiences and future potential and possibilities. Yet here, now, we are. Life is happening even as you read these words.
When I was 27, I was trying to find myself. Who was I? What was I doing? This frequently led me to move from job to job, relationship to relationship, and even place to place. I was seldom fully present, most often I was depressed about some past thing and/or anxious about some future matter.
Then one day, I nearly died. I have no memory of more than a week of my life surrounding leaving my house, getting hit by a car while crossing the street, the following hospitalization, surgeries, and worried friends and family constantly by my side.
I learned the true meaning of the question – if not today, when?
Be here now and live life
To begin to make active, consciously aware choices and decisions, you must practice mindfulness.
Mindfulness of the world without is easy. You get that from your 6 senses. Mindfulness of your inner being, your mindset/headspace/psyche self, requires you to get to know your thoughts, feelings, actions, intentions, and chosen life approach.
The only time you can become fully consciously aware of your inner self is here and now. That’s because the only time, as we perceive it, that’s truly real is now. The present. This moment.
The past has passed and cannot be undone, redone, or shunted away. The future is unwritten and can’t be predicted. Here and now, in the present, you’re empowered.
You always have a choice. Decisions are always within your reach. To be fair, sometimes there are limitations. Also, the choices might be between the lesser of two evils. Yet so long as you are exercising the muscles of choices and decisions, you empower yourself to have, be, and do more. You open yourself to almost unimaginable potential and possibility.
You will choose wrong. There will be pain and suffering sometimes. Yet that will also come with new experiences, teach you new things, and lead to some amazing possibilities.
Is it worth it? I think so. Since that accident, I have lived more fully, had more incredible life experiences, and treasured what is yet to come. There’s been pain along the way, too, but I would not trade it for the incredible experiences alongside it.
I prefer to take the wheel and do the driving as much as I can.
The path of your life is yours to choose. If not today, when?
This is the six-hundred and thirty-fifth (635) exploration of my Pathwalking philosophy. These weekly essays are my ideas for – and experiences with – applying mindfulness and positivity to walk along a chosen path of life to consciously create reality.
I share this journey as part of my desire to make a difference in this world and empower as many people as I can with conscious reality creation.
Thank you for joining me. Feel free to re-post and share this.
The first year of Pathwalking, including expanded ideas, is available here. Check out Amazon for my published fiction and nonfiction works.
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