The title seems a bit dramatic, but it’s true. I’m tired of living my life in a mindless array of actions. I'm tired of being bogged down by constant responsiblity and structure in my day. I am especially tired of living the same life every single day just like everyone else around me.
I am tired of my cookie-cutter life.
As I come to terms with my unhappiness of just surviving my life, I have decided that it’s time to change. It’s time I live a more adventurous and spontaneous life. It’s time to stop overthinking, analyzing, and planning every aspect of my future and just live in the now. As much as it sounds cliché, I long for a life in which I live with a love and a passion like today is my last day. I want to be able to put my head on the my pillow each night and be satisfied with what I've done in the day.
But how do I stop surviving life and actually start living? I get it, we all have responsibilities. We all have to go to class and we all have to go to our jobs. There are just somethings in life that we cannot get rid of. But there is more that we can do in our lives.
In order to finally start living, one must take risks because life begins outside our comfort zones. If you're debating if you should chop your hair off or dye it red. Just do it. If you're debating about applying for an internship that you don't think you'll ever get. Just apply. If you've been dying to travel the world. Just buy the plane ticket. It's time we stop thinking and just start doing. We need to take every opportunity that is offered to us and stop passing things up because we're waiting for the "right one" to come by. If I really want to start living, I have to say yes to every potential new friend, invitation out, school, sport, and internship opportunity.
The potential gained from living outside our comfort zone is far greater than the potential lost in all these situations. It's easy to stay in our comfort zones and just live life there because it's safe. But is that really living? Woody Allen once said, "90% of life is just showing up". We could choose to live in that 90% forever or we can make ourselves uncomfortable, take risks, be spontaneous, and end up living an absolute full and satisfactory life.
At the end of my life, I hope I have no regrets about "I wish I did...". When I die, I want to look back on my 20s, think of all the crazy risks I took, and smile about all the gains that came from them.
