Having time to think is a rare thing for most people. I often forget what I’m really doing here and what I really want. And worse, I have a feeling that if there were more hours in the day, I would somehow fill them with the same type of tedious and unnecessary nonsense that I am always occupied with, and I would still not take time for the sort of consideration that I have come to accept as so crucial to any sort of real happiness.
Over Spring Break, I sat thinking I needed to come up with a column topic. I went immediately to my usual thought process; what do I want or need to say? Having more than the usual amount of time for reflection on the subject, I realized I really was just glad to have the time to consider possibilities and travel all my many avenues of thought without feeling pressure to hurry and pick something due to having a hundred other things to do.
All this thinking led me to something I have always been somewhat aware of but had never fully explored. Really, not all the things people worry so much about are that important. The only thing that matters is if the sky falls tomorrow, and it turns out my entire life was working toward goals that will never be reached, then the only thing that will prove my life wasn’t a complete waste will be if I was doing something else worth doing, all the while.
It’s not that I think long-term goals are a bad thing, I have quite a few myself, but I am concerned too many people I know are living today with the sole purpose of achieving their plans for tomorrow. We have all heard variations on the idea you should live each day as though it will be your last. But although I always assumed this was something I do naturally because of knowing that I will die, I have since realized I had not considered all the implications of the idea.
Whenever someone asks what I would do if I knew I had (insert any small amount of time here) to live, I invariably say I would drop out of school and spend all my money getting to a beach with all my favorite books to amuse me in my final days. I realized today that to live as though each day were my last, I would have to arrange my life until I could answer that question with, “I wouldn’t change anything.” Now, since I doubt I will ever gain the funds to sit for the rest of my life in the sun with my books, and since I also doubt, in the end, I could really be happy living such a frivolous life, the only way for me to answer that question how I would like, is for me to change my ideas about what would make me happiest.
Methods of achieving happiness are definitely something that require examination on an individual basis. But I have a feeling if we thought about it more, we would become happier just from trying to be happy. If one with reasonable expectations and a willingness to be pleased by the good things in life accepts we can’t all be in ecstasy all the time, and there are restrictions of what is legal, moral and fair in pursuing happiness, then I really believe it wouldn’t be a huge difficulty for them to raise their level of self-satisfaction to completeness. And, at the very least, it can’t hurt to try.
Since life is so short, and for many it is shorter than we might wish it to be, the importance of living life in a valuable way is higher than that of anything else that we do. It’s not my place to suggest anyone besides myself isn’t living a life that would be a source of supreme satisfaction should it end abruptly. However, I really urge everyone to try to consider the answer and the ramifications of the question of what you would do if you knew you were going to die tomorrow, and then to attempt to live so you can answer that you wouldn’t change a thing.
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