The topic has been discussed since the time of ancient philosophers, it was given countless meanings and the answer to the meaning of life has been found in the most unexpected locations.
I don’t consider myself to be a very deep or philosophical person, mostly because I don’t adhere to the quote “cogito ergo sum”. In the biological way, life is an amoeba minding its own business, just as life is the dog you’re petting right now. To some, life can also be that NPC that keeps running into a wall in Grand Theft Auto, or that ChatGPT instance you’ve been sexting with for 14 days straight and are convinced you’re going to marry next year.
One thing is being alive, but what does actually “living” means? Is it the infinity pools from Dubai you keep seeing on Instagram? Is it in the lush jungle of Thailand you keep seeing on TikTok? To some, living a full life, filled with adrenaline means living, while to others just having the entire family at the dinner table is an achievement and a proof of another day where nothing went tragically wrong.
The term of “living” and the term of “happiness” are somehow connected, because they actually talk about the same thing in life, setting goals.
Before asking yourself if you’re truly living or truly happy, you need to identify the outline of what those terms actually mean to you, analyze how realistic they are and if you’re really being honest to yourself or just setting yourself up for failure. I’ve seen people who adapt their life standards to whatever the most fad idiotic celebrity shows them on Instagram and then have personality crises because they’re not reaching those checkpoints, which were fake in the first place.
Every one of us needs a reality check now and then. See what’s do-able and what’s not, but most important, take chances. Look at the risks, calculate them and make those hard decisions in life. Because, at the end of the day, living begins at the end of your comfort zone. And once you realize this and understand that living is actually just being happy with the life you’re having, or understanding the things you need to change are do-able and actually can do them, then you can improve your life and feel you’re living.
And after you make all these calculations, you’ll understand that living also means leaving. Yep yep yep, leave your worries behind, understand that more is less and less is more and focus only on the things that bring you happiness in life. The bear necessities.
