When it comes to analyzing your
approach to life, it is quite easy to get carried away by modern tendencies of
looking from all possible angles. You have nothing to blame yourself if you
decide to take a moment of pause in order to reflect at the true dimension of
the complex experience we call life. Verbs of state can be confusing, but there
is no doubt that living incorporates the ability to extract joy and
satisfaction from every moment, while existence can be used to describe the
endless routine of every day.
Our modern times force us to keep the
foot on the acceleration pedal all time, in a race to get more money, more
superficial experiences, and the validation of others. At the speed that we are
travelling through time, the present moment is always allusive, delayed towards
an uncertain future. We never really get the chance to acknowledge what we have
because there is always at the horizon the prospect of what we might have.
Embracing existence means keeping your head straight, away from the speedometer.
As the years go by, you are no longer the driver, but a simple passenger, a
spectator on a trajectory which was set long ago. On the other hand, living is
accessed when you allow yourself to slow down each time things go beyond your
control. The relativity of time perception can make even the simplest things a
source of infinite joy and happiness.
Despite the ever growing tendencies
of calling simple and mediocre those who indulge in simple pleasures, there is
no denial that seeking too much complexity, exclusivity, and elaborating each
life experience to its maximum potential, can distract your attention from the
act of living itself. When that happens, ours senses become numb and require a
lot of effort to be stimulated again.
Different people call it in different
ways but the general idea is the same. If we keep living existing like
this, we are heading towards the big sleep of our civilization faster than the
most pessimist scenarios can predict. It is already obvious that we need higher
and higher levels of stimulation in order to feel alive. Our movies are crowded
by violence, special effects, and emotions exploited to the maximum. Our
desires and needs are influenced by aggressive marketing, which ends up
creating the internal levers of our own existence. There is no denial that our
consume-based society leads toward a lifestyle which is not sustainable not
only from an ecological, but also from an emotional point of view. As we fail
to feel the void with what is needed to feel alive again, we embrace and accept
our personal drama or tragedy as a new source of fuel.
Crossing the line between existence
and life is as simple as taking a purposeless walk on a sunny day. You don’t
need to have a goal to give back color to life again. Life itself is a goal and
acknowledging the wonderful journey we are all taking part is something
extraordinary. If life is a bus, what you perceive as destiny is the seat you
end up with. It might not be the seat you dreamt of, or you might not have the
company you expected from the other passenger, but you do travel the same
distance and you are free to choose your own definition of beauty and happiness.
Challenging each and every hour of
your life and trying to figure out if you should consider it a part of living
or a part of existence might not be exactly the message you should extract from
these lines. Making a habit from putting your daily agenda under a magnifying
glass is both exhausting and pointless and tends to push the balance in favor
of “existing”. There is a special, hard to define flavor attached to “living”,
which keeps it away from any attempt of control. Life just happens, like flowing
water which fills any indentation in the ground. Nevertheless, questioning from
time to time whether you have the auto-pilot set to “existence”, or if you
control the steering-wheel of your life, and therefore enjoy “living”, is
highly encouraged.
