Is There More to Life?
On just another normal day as I was heading for my university class, I passed by a big poster that read “There has to be more to life than this.” It was advertising for an afternoon talk session that happened daily at the nearby community centre, and seeing that sentence really caught my attention and made me pause for a moment.
What was I really doing with my life?
Was I living my life to the fullest, or just going through the motions?
When I thought about it more deeply, I realised that I was living life as a robot would — just getting through each day, and feeling a sense of relief when the day ended with my head on my pillow and eyes blissfully closed.
I wasn’t really “living” per se — I was too tired to bother smelling the roses or to stop and give myself a breath of air. I was so preoccupied with trying to do well in school and maintain a healthy lifestyle, that mentally I was dead.
As someone with a need for perfection, and the absolute fear of failure, achieving success academically and basic all-rounded holistic excellence were such important factors in my life.
Without realising it, those priorities overtook and steered me, causing me to overlook the little things in life I was blind to see and appreciate. I was (and still am, honestly) so scared of losing out (FOMO, I see you there), that I would rather sacrifice time to rest and relax, than potentially “lose out” on studying time, or any other things that I felt were more productive than taking a break.
When I saw that message on the poster, I felt this deep sadness — wasn’t there more to my life than just grades? Wasn’t there more to my life than trying to be perfect, when we all know that perfection is practically impossible?
I still struggle to relax and let go, to give myself self-care time to stop and recover. It’s something I’m working on, and know it will be a long journey till I’m comfortable with doing so.
Bit by bit, I’m trying to loosen up, and this comes in the form of making myself write a journal entry at least once a week, or at least giving myself 15 minutes to properly sit down and eat.
I hope that this post, if it resonates with you, allows you to give yourself that space to stop, take a breath and let go every now and then.
Because there is more to life.
