“Many people are alive but don’t touch the miracle of being alive.”
— Thich Nhat Hanh
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From an early age people started to die on me.
Not on me, but around me, if you get my meaning. Young, healthy, vital people just checked out, they suddenly weren’t here any more. I never got to say goodbye. Just a phone call late at night, a sad friend with some news for me. “Was I sitting down?”. It didn’t matter after a while. I got used to receiving bad news, but I never got used to not seeing them again, feeling like I could have done something, that I could have said something to tell them how much of a difference they made to my life.
Regrets.
After a while I learnt that I couldn’t take seeing someone again for granted. I had to make the most of the time I had with them. I had to convey with my words and my presence how much I appreciated them and enjoyed our time. It drove me to pay attention, to be present and to take nothing for granted.
After a while I started to consider myself lucky in a very real sense – it woke me up to a reality of life.
All this death meant I saw how short my life could be; that no one was guaranteed any length of time. Momento Mori. When your dance comes to an end, that’s it. You made the most of your time, or you did not. There are no repeats; no go-agains.
This was no bad thing; it meant life got precious. There was no more time to waste.
So I got going.
I started working out what was truly important to me and prioritising that. I made plans, I started making them happen. I got clear on what my personal definition of a successful life was, and headed off in that direction with a sense of urgency.
It was a great thing, a necessary thing. So many people don’t really know what they want from their life and finally I’d made a start.
But the true blessing was seeing that there’s two parts to each of our lives:
Part 1 – what we do; and Part 2 – how we do it.
You can be in the middle of doing what you love more than anything else in the world, but if you’re not present and if your attitude sucks? Your diamond moment turns into a turd.
You can also be in the middle of what you find most tedious, most boring, most pointless – and beyond taking a mental note to find a way of saying “No” to these things more often – if you can get super present and flip your negative attitude on its head, the whole thing will transform.
In other words, there’s doing what we love; and then there’s loving what we do.
You can often choose to do different things, and please do. But take nothing for granted. The most powerful skill you can develop is realising that you have the power to choose to do the same things completely differently. Your presence and attitude is sovereign; they affect every single thing.
We each have the power to create turd moments or truly alive moments – and I suggest you find out how you create such as soon as possible because your time is short too. Choosing to fill your moments with negativity and boredom and drama and mindlessness is a sheer waste of life.
Amor Fati – as the great Nietzsche once wrote: Love what is.
Love what is. Friggin’ LOVE it.
It’s a skill for sure, but make the most of each and every moment you are given. For we are given it. It’s never certain; it’s never deserved; it is given to us.
The result if you do make the most of each moment?
Pure aliveness; truly living.
I don’t know about you, but that’s what I want my life to be about. So there you are. Choose wisely my friends!
Go well,
Arjuna