L - Living

People always talk about living life to the full, but a shocking amount of people don’t. All I hear is what people want to do, but if you want to do something, today is the day to start. Not when you’re older, or wiser. Want to do something? Do it now.

I want to write books, so I’m doing it now, I do it every day. I am living my dream right now. People get so hung up on dreaming about doing something that they forget to do it. They say that they’ll learn an instrument one day when they could be signing up for lessons today. It always seems to take a near death experience to make people start to actually do something with their lives.

Life may be just a process, something to do between when you are born and when you die, but living is a dedication to using that time in a way that matters. It doesn’t have to matter to the rest of the world, but if you spend your life dreaming about doing something, you never actually do it. What was the point of your life then, if you spent it dreaming about living?

I’m not saying that if you’re fourteen and you dream of having babies that you should hook up with the nearest person of the opposite sex and get pregnant. I could write 200 pages of gibberish, random typing on a keyboard, but what would that mean? If I spent weeks, months, years carefully selecting the right words and developing the characters, then the book would really mean something. It wouldn’t just be a collection of letters on a page; it would be a story. If I spent my life dreaming about writing books and being famous, but I never actually touched my fingers to the keyboard, or put a pen to paper, then what is my dream? Did I even dream it, really?

Being alive is a state, but living is what makes it worthwhile for your cardiac muscle to pump blood around your body, or for your brain to form thoughts Do something with your life, live it, don’t just be a breeze; be a storm. Shake the foundations, churn the water, because that’s what makes you more than just a collection of muscles and tendons and bones; more than just a sack of flesh and blood; living makes you someone, not something. If you never do anything, you may as well be a wall.

Love and be loved, live and love living, because when all is said and done, you are the product of your actions, your thoughts and your feelings. You get to choose what makes you who you are, and that’s something not everyone grasps. We are what we chose to be, not what other think we should be, or who we think we ought to be. I am a writer because I write; I am a reader because I read. If I didn’t do those things, I couldn’t call myself a writer, or a reader.

We are not made; we make ourselves. Who we can be, or could have been, is insignificant. What we are, what we chose to be; that’s what matters. Living is a choice too. We can meet life head on or drift passively through it and only we can decide that. I believe in choosing your own fate, not surrendering to what you think you should be.

Life might give you the incentive to kill, but you are never a killer until you choose to kill. Life can hit you, but you have the power to hit back, make yourself more than just a product of this world. Never settle for something when you know that you can do better, or want better. Others can put you down, but you have to make the choice to get back up.

Living is more than just getting up in the morning and doing what is expected of you in life. Living is about expecting something of yourself and never settling for anything but the best you can do. We can choose to let other dictate our actions, but in that we sacrifice our freedom, our potential and everything that really matters.

Today, people obsess over doing what is expected of them, and never expecting anything of themselves. Why bother getting good grades if you don’t want them? Why surrender to what others want, when what should matter is what you want? Some people want the best for you, others wish you ill, but take away the wants of others and what you are left with; these are the things that you want for yourself.

These are the things that matter.

©EmmaTobin 2013