Imagine you’re at the end of your life and there are no days left. Your life flashes before you — what are you thinking about? Is it about money? Or your house, your car, your possessions? What you wore to the party that night or how expensive your bag was? Or maybe…
Maybe it’s the feeling of being awestruck your first day in a foreign country you’re exploring for the very first time. That smell of burnt wood stuck on your clothes the day after a campfire with your best friends. How it felt to kiss her like it was your last day under that redwood tree. The vibration of live music from one of your favorite bands emanating from the stage. Catching the subtle smell of snowfall through the cracked window sill on a Sunday. Life is an accumulation of these small moments, made larger by the beauty in its simplicity.
The truth is, at the end of our days our memories are all we’ll have. It’s all that will be left for us to cherish before we take our last breath. Since the cradle, we’ve been taught to buy into the lie that we need material things and external validation in order to be happy. If we have the latest iPhone, the latest car, the latest cool gadget, or the trendiest clothes and make-up it will measure and define our completion — or so the media and society says. And they may bank on our attention and sense of worthiness, but we are not made to be exploited and profited from. We are humans born to live a full life — we have to experience and taste every last bit of our moments— however big or small it seems to be.
We are all made up of everything we’ve ever lived. Our greatest joys and our deepest despairs are all part of our human experience, and we need to feel it all. The question is: Will you strive to make a living? Or will you strive to make a life worth living?
