There are many ways to say the same thing.
You only live once. YOLO. We have only one life to live. And as Steve Jobs would put it, “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.”
But everyday we ignore this truth, not because we don’t live our lives to the fullest enough, but because we live too many.
We cut up our already short lives into chunks we call work-life, social-life, family-life, after-work-life, barkada-life, gym-life, travel-life, study-life, but end up leaving just a little chunk to actually living. Maybe we live on the weekends and die just before Monday and are reborn by Friday night. Or we die every morning just before work only to come alive afterwards.
There’s nothing wrong with segregating our lives. It’s only the practical thing to do.
The problem arises when we don’t consider some of these “lives” as actually living.
When we’re always looking ahead to the next break, the next weekend, the next life, the more fun life, the stress-free life, what happens is we lose a huge amount of time that could otherwise be used to be present, to be more mindful, to be alive in every living moment.
Next thing we know, 80% of our lives is devoted to either being stuck in the past or anticipating the future, and that’s 80% too much.
We get one life and if we spend most—if not all—of it actually living, then it’s all we need.