Life is too short

Life Is Too Short To Live It For Someone Else

  “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do, so throw off the bowlines, sail away from safe harbor, catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore, Dream, Discover.” 

–Mark Twain

It’s hard to say something about this quote that it doesn’t say itself… but I will still try.

A common regret of people on their deathbed is they wish they would have lived a life true to themselves instead of one for others. Most people follow a path in life they think is for themselves when they are really just living for the approval and good option of other people.

Money, power, fame, keeping up the Joneses, family expectations, and the other ways we seek to “validate” ourselves is just a way of garnering recognition from other people. And according to those that have sought this their very thing their entire lives, we find that this is a grave mistake for one’s long-term happiness. If you make this mistake, you will regret it. This is now, for the most part, an axiom of life.

Start now. Live for yourself. Do what you want to do. 

Life is too short to not live for yourself first. Your friends, family and cohorts may or may not accept your the life you want to lead, but doing so is still what you must do if you want to be happy. Or, in other words, if you try to align you happiness with the pleasing of others, you will rarely find a way to make that work.

This is why your happiness must come first. Always first.

You and I each get only one chance at this life—we will never get a second chance at living tomorrow, today or yesterday. This fact of life should be the motivation you need to start aligning your priorities in a way that is based on what you want and what is the best reflection of who you are as a person instead of some hollow path based on expectations and the good option of other people (cleverly termed “GOOP” by the awesome dude Peter Sage).

Of course, some people won’t understand your choices. They might not want to get thembecause your choices might offend them or breed resentment or jealousy in them. But such is life. You can’t please everybody. When you follow your heart, you will actively displease people. But that’s ok. They’ll be just fine. They are too worried about themselves to worry about you for too long so just let it go and accept it as par for the course. In time, most people will come around. And those that don’t shouldn’t be in your life. Period.

And what if you don’t live for yourself? What if you decide to live a life based on the expectations of others? Well, according to Maslow, you would be neglected your highest need as a human being. In short, you become a life-wasting, stifled, unexpressed, zombie-like person that walks around with a calm exterior while living a life of quiet desperation. A price too high to pay if you ask me.

The Way Way Back

Did you know that our ancestors used to live as nomadic hunter-gatherers in small tribes of 40-80 people? Children were raised by the entire tribe. Tribes were a big family. In fact, it was impossible to tell who the father of a particular child was because there were no paternity tests and women were not “shamed” for sleeping with more than one man. Women were also not objects that a man “owned” by marriage or “commitment” because there was no concept of “property” within nomadic tribes. Tribes shared everything: resources, parenting, hunting, forging, building, etc.

It’s suiting, for my point, for you to realize where we have come from so you can see how human beings have evolved (some say devolved) from a life as nomadic hunter-gatherers living in small tribes to living in single-family households within our industrialized societies.   

❤️