How I came to realise the worth of life

I had never really understood the concept of a full life that author John Green has talked about, in his book The Fault in Our Stars. According to him, even a short life lived to its fullest is a life lived well enough. In the past, I would constantly debate this idea in my head. How could a shorter life be better than a longer life, regardless of how it is lived? Surely, I thought, a longer life meant more experiences, more memories and hence, more happiness and satisfaction. How could a shorter life, no matter how fully lived, compare with that?

And so yesterday, as I was taking a bath, a realisation sunk in (notice how the best ideas and realisations come while bathing). The reason a shorter life (and known to be so) may be better than a longer life is because, with the latter, we take our time for granted. When we are aware that we have a short amount of time to get things done, we try to fit in all we can. And hence, that is when we are working the best. Moreover, when understood with regard to human lives, that is also when we are living the best.

All of us fortunate enough to have been blessed with a long and healthy life constantly while it away. As children, new to the experience of living, we start off learning enthusiastically, constantly experimenting. But as we grow, a lot of us lose that interest. The urge to try new things fades away. We start holding everything around us, but ourselves, responsible for all that makes us unhappy in life. Ever wondered that maybe the reason why many adults claim to not have learnt anything the previous year is because they stopped trying their hand at anything new?

As I approach my 18th birthday, I realise that I too feel myself moving forward in life with that attitude. Through the latter part of my school years, I started holding everything around myself responsible for the way I lived - never really satisfied. I've stopped challenging myself with learning new things. I love the feeling of self-realisations sinking in but I've become too lazy to put myself in situations that will evoke them. Not to say that I didn't learn anything this year. I have. But that is because I still haven't approached adulthood, things are still changing and life hasn't "settled down", as they say. It's not because I made a conscious effort. But if I continue to harbour this attitude right till the static comforts of a routine adult life, it is going to become even more difficult to weed it out.

So what should I do? What should we all do?

Maybe slowly but surely start working our way towards adopting a lifestyle that makes the much repeated phrase, "life is an adventure", ring true the loudest. We shouldn't need news about a developing cancerous tumour from the doctor to start working on our bucket list. One doesn't need to wait to make new year resolutions to start a new project. So should we just start doing everything according to our whims and fancies?

No, obviously not. We need to learn to balance. We need to manage our responsibilities and also simultaneously learn to make time for ourselves to explore life. I know this sounds unachievable. It's not something that one can learn to do in a day, a month or even a year. But if we keep trying every day, despite failing multiple times, there will come a day when we look back and realise that we're much better off from the day when we first started trying.