How to Enjoy Life Before It’s Too Late
Gems of wisdom from brilliant minds
“But what is the meaning of life?” asked Alice.
“The meaning of life is just to be alive,” he answered.
“It is so plain and so simple. Yet everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.” Alan Watts, philosopher
What Alan Watts points out above is that we are lucky to enjoy the gift of life but we still keep on rushing around looking for it. We don’t get to realize that life is already in us. We are life: we breathe, feel and we are enough as we are.
People tend to think about life in two different ways.
Read and take your pick.
Some people think they are going to live long enough and have the luxury to postpone things: once, twice or so many times that it tends to become a way of living.
Others believe that life is short and they don’t have the time to fit everything they like in it anyway. So, why care?
If the first category gave you a flick of recognition, you must have experienced that feeling which urges you to postpone things or situations. And the odds say that you might still experience it. You might think that you will do something in the future, you will make that trip you always wanted, you will quit your job to pursue your dream as a writer, you will be the person you always wanted to. You will be happy.
Will.
You seem to place all your desires and dreams in the future and expect that things will change someday but not now. By thinking that the next moment contains what this one lacks, your future lies on uncertainty.
Time passes without realizing, without you having enjoyed the ‘now and today’.
And there comes a day when, with snowy white hair and wrinkles on your face, you say “I wish I had tried dancing” or “I could have pursued my dream of becoming a teacher”.
“Why didn’t I do it? I had all the time in the world.”
I’ll tell you why. Because you forget your mortality. You forget that you are here for a specific amount of time and that, someday, your life will come to an end.
I haven’t got any white hair yet, neither any wrinkles on my face and I don’t know how it feels when you come to that point in your life when you realize you wasted your time by doing things you didn’t really want to or by not doing things you wanted to. But I assure you that I don’t want to find out.
If you tend to think that your life is short and you can’t possibly fit everything in it, allow me to tell you that you’re wrong. Life is not short, we make it short.
Don’t take it from me; take it from Seneca, a Roman Stoic philosopher, who said on the meaning of life:
“It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested. But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death’s final constraint to realize that it had passed away before we knew it was passing. So it is: we make it short and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it. Life is long if you know how to use it.”
What does Seneca, twenty centuries ago, wanted to say in layman’s terms?
Life is by no means short. We are humans and we are gifted to live more than many other animals on our planet. Our life consists of minutes, hours and days and it’s up to us how we spend them. Do we spend them on ‘no good activity’ as Seneca says? Or do we make the most out of them?
Do we enjoy our little moments, our people and the things we love or do we rush around non-stop trying to fit everything in and please everybody?
I bet you know the answer. We make ourselves busy and full of obligations and we are absent from ourselves. We are so preoccupied with our work, our boss, our bills, other people’s opinion, that we forget to slow down and listen to our inner self.
What would that self tell us if we took a moment?
Maybe that we need to take it easy, listen to our needs, make time for ourselves and spend our precious time doing stuff that fills us with joy.
Something to take home
It’s hard. I get it. You have to go to work, even if you don’t enjoy it; you need the money to pay your bills. You have to attend to your family and spend less time on things you enjoy doing on your own. You have to go to that meetup otherwise they’ll think you’re weird.
But, you know what? It doesn’t need to be an obligation. It doesn’t need to be a chore. You can do something about it. Even if you can’t quit your draining 9–5 job, you can find a way to make time pass pleasantly.
You can practice that craft you always wanted. You can do fun things with your family. You can meet with your friends and enjoy it. You don’t have to but you can choose what you want to fill your day with. Whatever you choose, make sure it’s something that fills you with joy.
Now, you might ask me: “What if I want to lay on the beach every day, soaking up the sun and drinking my mojito?” Well, in this case, go for it. However, you might consider making some adjustments. If you’re not part of the lucky population that lives in warm climates by the sea, you might be happy just laying on the park enjoying a sip of your coffee and reading your favorite book.
Whatever you choose to do, make sure you enjoy every bit of it.
“How we spend our days is how we spend our lives.” Annie Dillard
Our life is made by moments and moments fill our days. Let’s make the most out of them.
References: The Shortness of Life: Seneca on Busyness and the Art of Living Wide Rather Than Living Long, by Maria Popova.
If you enjoyed this piece, you might also like my article, The beauty of failure.
