How to Live a Valuable Life
You’re alive and breathing, now what?
His ball of brown hair is as big as the mysterious reddish rock formation filling my screen.
Kirill, my Russian friend, leans over my shoulder with eyes gleaming. He’s trying to discuss an important insight. And no, it wasn’t a lecture from Tolstoy or how to look tough and serious like how movies portray Russkies. I have that innocent Asian look and that’s definitely handy to learn.
We’re in Australia, and on my screen is a photo of Uluru, the sacred massive monolith in the literal heart of Australia. As a fellow travel enthusiast, he is telling me how amazing it is and why I should go and see it.
In the meantime, I started searching for more information on the internet. I saw some photos of people doing a climbing tour on the rock and I told him about it and the prospect of doing it myself. Kirill didn’t respond, so I turned to look at his face. I was surprised to see furrowing brows and a gaping mouth replace his previous amused face.
“Why would you want to climb it?” he said in disbelief. “I don’t understand why people do it. It’s a sacred place, people pray on it, why would somebody want to trample a sacred area?”
Well, he’s got a point.
The Consequence of a Choice
I watched the movie, Tenet, and there’s a character named Kat. On the surface, she has everything a woman could wish for — a powerful husband, a loving son, a great job, and enormous wealth. And yet, she lives a lonely, deceitful, complicated life.
In a scene of the Protagonist and Kat at a restaurant, she recounts a memory. She had glimpsed a woman diving into the water from their yacht and vanishing afterward. Thinking she’s a mistress of her husband, she then tells the Protagonist she never felt such envy.
“You don’t seem the jealous type”, the Protagonist said.
“Of her Freedom”, Kat responded.
Most things are better appreciated from a distance. National treasures such as Uluru in Australia, the Pyramids of Egypt, Batad Rice Terraces in the Philippines — the best photographs and experience in these places are from afar, not when standing on top of it.
Wealth is dreamt by almost everyone, almost everyone idolizes the rich and powerful. Decades ago everybody wants to be a Hollywood star. Now, everybody wants to be the next Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, or Mark Zuckerberg — people who control technology and most probably who’ll control the future.
But getting rich isn’t a walk on the beach while watching vanilla sunsets. You have to sacrifice a huge amount of your time and effort to be a businessman. Some trade their soul and reputation to be a drug lord. You choose, your way.
By trekking the Batad Rice Terraces in the Philippines, you get to discover a secret: that the majestic Tappiya Waterfalls are hiding in the heart of the mountains. By going inside the pyramids you can study the past by excavating mummies. The wonders of Egyptian history are recorded through the Hieroglyphics. Climbing Uluru sure feels glorious knowing you have conquered a sacred ground.
You want me to go on?
By reading books, delaying gratification, and studying investments you get to live better. By dedicating time, effort, and skill to a blank canvas or a marble slab you create art. By living a life of sacrifice you get to inspire a nation to fight for truth, justice, and democracy. By being the tortured but brave Kat in Tenet you get to save the world… from a crazy, evil husband.
When We Value Others a Lot
I was reading an article earlier today from Bar Franek. He’s a great writer and then I found out he’s also a self-taught programmer. How can a person be skilled artistically and technically at the same time? Simple, he dedicated his energy and effort to learning both. It’s simple, but not easy.
Then I got distracted by watching a video of Seth MacFarlane. He’s the guy behind the voice of Peter, Stewie, Brian, and Quagmire at The Family Guy. If voicing 4 characters is not amazing enough for you, then you should know he’s also a writer, producer, animator, filmmaker, and singer with 6 albums under his belt. This guy is 6 people in one! And here I am, staring at a blank page most of the time, not knowing what to write. I can’t even properly do the one thing I want to do.
It’s very easy to get anxious nowadays. Every day we get barraged with news of people achieving a lot of unimaginable things — investing in the stock market or bitcoin and getting rich, people founding startup companies and earning millions while still in their 20s. There is nothing wrong with that. It’s good that people are trying, discovering, innovating. But what’s wrong is when we want the same things for the wrong reason.
Do you start a business to go with the hype? Do you invest in the stock market because that is what everybody else is doing? Do you do something for the sake of belonging?
Living a Life We Value
Most of us live boring lives, and that is fine. You don’t have to be a superhero to properly raise a child. You don’t have to be a CIA agent who speaks 10 languages to talk to the attractive lady in the bar. You don’t have to kill yourself to prove to your partner that you love them. You don’t have to be an Olympic gold medalist to spend Saturday night swimming with your friends.
There is nothing wrong with being ordinary, on living a simple and yet meaningful life. But there is also nothing wrong with wanting to be great, on wanting a better life, on wanting to make a difference.
Although, we should know that this also means taking the road less traveled. It means being brave in creating the life most people would only admire. It involves experimenting and failing. It means getting frustrated or clueless or anxious, sometimes all at the same time.
It’s believing in yourself and picking yourself up 10 times, 50 times, 100 times until you finally reached a point in your life you only dreamed of before. It means going through the boring, unfulfilling parts and still moving forward. Sometimes you’ll even be forced to choose between your dream or your love. You’ll have to leave some pieces of yourself behind to make room for your new self.
Death Defines Life
There is a concept from the Greek Philosophy of Stoicism that is Memento Mori, remember you must die.
Civilizations are created to preserve and provide meaning to their ancestor’s death. People look for a mate to produce offspring that they’ll leave behind after they die. Men conquered empires, erected statues and monuments to make sure they won’t be forgotten. Jesus, Muhammad, and Buddha passed on their teachings so they’ll be able to live forever in the hearts of their followers. The reality of humankind, whatever we have right now, is driven by legacy.
It is the legacy we’ll leave behind after death that defines our life.
In Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol, he described the Freemason’s ancient ritual of death contemplation by drinking wine from a skull.
Now, we don’t want anybody digging graveyards here. Plus trading your usual wine glass for a skull, to contemplate about life and death during those nights you’re drinking alone is too much hardcore for almost everyone. Imagine getting wasted and someone finding you lying on the floor the next day with a skull in your hand.
No one’s performing weird rituals yet, but here are some simple things we can do instead:
1. Improve Self-Awareness
Self-awareness lets us know what is important to us and what we value in life. This can be done in a lot of ways. Some people meditate, some people do journaling. I do journaling and personally choose it as my form of meditation. Journaling cleans my mind. If I feel upset, I journal. If I feel anxious, I journal. If I feel happy I journal.
I journal to put my mind in the present and calm it down.
If you don’t like writing then you can try voice recording. Journaling led me to write articles I want to publish and share. Who knows, voice recording might interest you in podcasting. Always remember, it doesn’t have to be perfect. This is for you and for your eyes only. Say what you want to say, do what you want to do.
The most important thing is, you’re being honest with yourself.
What’s more alarming than the lies other people tell us are the lies we tell ourselves.
If that still isn’t for you, you can try asking about yourself from other people. Although, there are some things people see differently than what we see in ourselves.
Exercising is also a form of self-awareness. You don’t expect that, don’t you? Exercising only works well if we hit the correct muscles in our body. It needs focus for it to work, that is what this discipline teaches us.
Self-awareness will open new doors you haven’t thought of before.
2. Do something of interest in your discomfort zone.
When I did my first solo international travel to Japan, I did a lot of things that are out of my discomfort zone. I traveled alone even though I didn’t know anybody in there personally. I didn’t book a hotel and instead tried Workaway, wherein I help my host a few hours a day in exchange for accommodation and food. I bathed on an onsen and I hitchhiked. I was feeling nervous most of the time but after the experience, I’ve proved to myself I can do a lot of different things I wouldn’t do before. And I was able to do it because it’s part of something I love, which is traveling.
Thinking about death is a huge discomfort to everybody, but we don’t have to force ourselves. It’s counterintuitive, it’s against our nature, it won’t work. So we have to trick ourselves and do it little by little, entering into our discomfort zone one step at a time.
3. Get connected
Record your thoughts, publish them, and start a conversation. This goes with what I have written before about journaling and voice recording. It’s Dead Poet’s Society style, but instead of reading about old texts we do the writing/ voice recording ourselves and share it with people to start the conversation about the topic. There are tons of groups on Facebook that you can share this subject and tons of people who’ll read, give their opinion, and talk about it.
It’s even a paradox to begin having the consciousness to our life’s end. But hey guess what, 10 out of 10 people die. So we might as well talk about it.
You can even try this immediately after reading this article. I have an assignment for you: go to a certain Facebook group (I suggest something on self-awareness or self-improvement). Then start a conversation on how do people try to live a valuable life.
You can even use this article as an excuse. Say something like, “I read about this article on Medium and it talks about living a valuable life, she gave me this assignment to talk about this to strangers, I just want your opinion about it. Please comment.” See people respond.
4. Instead of creating New Year’s Resolution, have instead Last Year’s Conclusion
“I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.”
- Steve Jobs
You don’t have to do it every day like Steve Jobs but it’s still important to evaluate one’s life as much as we can. What are the things that add value to my life, what doesn’t? Every year I ask myself these questions and do a list. I act based on the list and do steps to change the things I want to change, remove things that don’t add value to my life anymore, and replace them with something that does. It’s an ongoing process. As long as we’re living we’ll change, we’ll learn, we’ll improve.
5. Explore, do workshops and have a coach
I tried a self-awareness workshop and it helped me understand my past, engage in my present, and build a future I value. Exploring allows us to grow and workshops are one of the best ways to do it. My Ontological coach provided me with an objective opinion on the way I’m living my life and how I want to live it. And even though the workshop is over, I am still having conversations with my coach from time to time.
I’ll be writing about my workshop experience soon: what transpired during the sessions and the things I learned from it that changed the way I live my life for the better. If you want to know about it, make sure to follow so you’ll be updated.
These are the things I have tried personally and helped me live a more valuable life. It’s an ongoing process and there are tons of other ways to do it instead. But what’s important is we start and we try.
Some people content themselves by having God as the answer; some live their lives asking endless questions.
Do you want to be someone who appreciates from a distance? Or, be that someone who people appreciate from a distance? Who are you going to be?
Create Your Legacy
I wasn’t able to go to Uluru. But if ever I get to see it someday, I’ll look at it from a distance as Kirill has. I respect the aboriginal’s story of their ancestral beings. Those who were thought to have formed Uluru’s numerous caves and fissures in the Dreaming. But I’ll also make sure I’m not the person who only always appreciates. I’ll make sure I create my own legacy.
Thank you so much for reading. Do you have more ideas on how to live a valuable life and steps on how to do it? Comment about it and let’s have a conversation. In the meantime, keep exploring.
