Perhaps one of the greatest regrets we could have at the end of life is that we didn’t enjoy it as much as we could have. Caught up in competing with others, chasing goals, and trying to fulfill ourselves with achievements, we forget to slow down and appreciate the day we’re living, which is in fact our entire life.
When we become ok with time speeding by (often times during a less-than-pleasant stretch), we open ourselves to the possibility of not appreciating the time we have and everything else we take for granted: health, relationships, opportunity, freedom.
Knowing that everything as we know it could change in the blink of an eye, we should look to maximize each day we have in this life. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t defer gratification, or that you shouldn’t make sacrifices in the short term, but it means that we should re-learn how to appreciate the simplest of pleasures and rekindle the excitement we had as small children.
Through seeing the world as an unravelling of an incomprehensible work of art, we can recapture the joy of life that we had when we were young.
As the Stoic philosopher, Seneca, said, “the whole future lies in uncertainty: live immediately”.