Whose Life is it Anyway?
Are you living life for you – or someone else?
As children, our parents have a lot of expectations of us. But a great deal of this – particularly when we’re young – is beneficial.
For example – saying please and thank you, sharing toys with other kids, overall good manners, and punctuality are qualities you carry with you all your life.
As you get older, teachers have expectations of you. Learn what they are teaching, do your homework, meet the given deadlines for this project, and so on. Again, many of these will carry into your overall life experience.
After school, when you set off on your own, you take charge. However, you still likely must meet the expectations of others. As an employee, you must be on time to work, meet the deadlines, and show proper deference to the bosses. As a child, your parents expect you to come to meals and visit with them during holidays and such. If you are involved with someone, they have expectations of you, too.
Is life nothing but meeting the expectations of others? Is that what it’s all about? NO.
Whose life is anyway? It is yours. But, since human beings are social creatures, we have various interactions with one another.
For many people, it feels easier to just go with the flow, let life live you, and exist by rote. Wake, work, rest, do things, sleep, repeat.
Yet if you choose to do this and live by rote, it will become unsatisfactory in time. Why? Because you’re not being true to yourself.
Being true to you
I know a lot of people who have jobs they abhor. But to pay the bills, keep the house, order take-out, and do the things that are expected – they accept them as necessities.
Along that line, many people are incapable of living in the here-and-now because they’re too busy worrying about the future. According to our first-world societal expectations, to retire comfortably in your late sixties, you must work your ass off in the meantime. Give it all you’ve got – and then toss in an extra 10-50% more.
Meanwhile, whose life is it anyway? Are you living and working for you or for them? Sure, you can argue it’s for you – meanwhile, here you are miserable day in and day out – but looking ahead to how it will be in ‘X’ number of years when you get to retire.
We only get one shot, in these bodies, to live this life. Choosing to not be bothered to be content and focused on the now in the hope of a comfortable future, when all is said and done, is kind of silly.
Don’t get me wrong, you should save for the future. Having a retirement account is wise, particularly if you can start it in your 20s. But not living, here and now, for the sake of a future that might not come makes no sense.
If you are in your 20s or 30s and working a miserable job that saps all your energy or stresses you out, you’ve already lowered the odds of making it to that retirement in your late 60s. Or, when you get there, being too broken to enjoy the fruits of your labor.
That doesn’t even account for random happenstance. Between here and there, lots of things outside your control might occur.
Who else can live your life for you?
There is nobody but you inside your head, heart, and soul. Only you think and feel thoughts and emotions. You’re the only one moving your body to act and have intentions behind it.
Nobody else is capable of getting into your inner being but you. This means, despite societal expectations and what friends, family, and loved ones may want of you – you get the final vote.
Why are we so scared to live in the now? Because we have bought the false narrative that we need person ‘X’, thing ‘Y’, and object ‘Q’ to truly live.
But that’s not true. I can live without that expensive car, a six-figure salary, or the influence of any given politician. True, you may need to adjust from the familiar to the unfamiliar – but you can.
Humans are eminently adaptable. Don’t believe me? What other animal on Planet Earth can physically live in ANY given climate, travel by land, air, sea, and even outside the atmosphere? Just human beings can adapt to do it all.
Along the way, we’ve developed all sorts of artifices that dictate our lives. False divisions, power struggles, made-up currencies to buy anything and everything imaginable, and so on. The reality we accept tends to make us appear very small and disempowered.
We made this reality, however. In 1921 – 100 years ago – tons of things we take for granted didn’t exist. The internet, mobile phones, microchips and all their affiliate technology, vaccines to keep us safe, and much more.
No higher power, no great being wiser than you or I made this world. Human beings did. Working together, we transformed ourselves. We changed.
Change, of course, terrifies people. Which creates a constant loop that can stall you out because change is inevitable – but the ONLY constant in the Universe.
Change or be changed
The vast majority of change we experience we don’t even recognize as change. We just accept it as a part of life.
Your hair and nails always grow. Your body changes throughout your lifetime in numerous ways. The air we breathe changes constantly.
Big changes are far more noticeable. For example, the United States went from having over ten-million cars registered in 1921 to over two-hundred-seventy million in 2021. That’s a big difference, and if a person who lived in 1921 was instantly transported to the world of 2021 the shock would likely be tremendous.
Change is inevitable. Big or small, it will ALWAYS happen. It’s the only constant in the Universe. Yet we tend to be afraid of it rather than embrace it.
Why? One of the dualities of humankind is that while we seek to grow – and thus change – we also seek comfort and familiarity. So, you live your life to achieve a certain comfort level – which, of course, is never unchanging.
When a drastic, unwanted change occurs – such as losing your home to flood or fire – you will change or be changed. But before a drastic, outside influence change occurs, you have the same choice. Change or be changed.
This is where the question of whose life is it anyone comes into play. Because you need to be cognizant of whether you’re living for you or for someone else and/or expectations you don’t truly desire.
Get to know you and your life
Often, we look outside ourselves for answers. But the answer to whose life is it anyone is wholly within you.
How do you work with this? Mindfulness.
When you practice mindfulness, you gain conscious awareness of what’s both within and without – in the now.
Mindfulness paves the way to the inner paths between your physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual being. It shows you a wide variety of your overall sense of self.
This begins with awareness of your sensory input via your six senses. Additionally, conscious awareness of your thoughts, feelings, actions, and intentions.
That then feeds into your awareness, in this moment, of your mindset/headspace/psyche and overall inner-being. How, what, where, who, and why YOU are. This is your conscious self.
Once you become better aware of your conscious self, you become empowered to understand, work with, and alter your subconscious self. That opens you to knowing and changing your beliefs, habits, values, and your underlying sense of being.
Which ties into whose life it is anyway. Because consciously or unconsciously, you choose who you desire to be. When you practice mindfulness, you are choosing consciously.
By getting to know who you are, you also get to know who you desire to be. Thus, you determine if the life you live is yours – or if you’re living more for the benefit of another.
Finally – there is no denying that we make choices that entangle our life with that of another. Often, your life is shared with a spouse, parents and children, business partners, close friends, etc. That might mean that, in choosing to live life for you, it also means living life for them.
But so long as you’ve consciously made those choices for your life – your life is, clearly, yours.
Are you living life for yourself, or someone/something else? Did you choose to live the life you live consciously or subconsciously?
This is the four-hundred and eighty-fourth exploration of my Pathwalking philosophy. These weekly essays are ideas for – and my personal experiences with – mindfulness and walking 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 along the way. Additionally, I desire to empower myself and my readers with conscious reality creation.
Thank you for joining me. Feel free to re-blog and share this.
The first year of Pathwalking, including expanded ideas, is available here. My additional writing, both fiction and non-fiction, are available here.
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