My vision of a life worth living
Sep 2023
The following writing was the final paper for my Life Worth Living class last semester, submitted on May 1, 2023.
On the morning of April 24th I ran a half marathon (13.1 miles) in 2 hours and 34 minutes. That’s roughly a 12 minute mile. A slow pace. But exactly 2.5 months before that, on February 13th — the first time I ever ran in my life — I could only run for 4 minutes.
I have peripheral pulmonary stenosis, a fancy way of saying that I have narrowings in my veins. That means I get about 75% the amount of oxygen that a normal person does with every breath. I grew up believing I had no endurance: I would literally get excused from running the mile in school.
But on that day in February, I said to myself: “screw it. What if I can go slowly, at my own pace, but actually run?”
Whenever I ask myself those “what if?” questions, they stick with me. A small voice in my head keeps mulling it over, until it gets to the point where I absolutely can’t ignore it anymore and I just have to do it. That’s what led me to shave my head, polar plunge, speak at a political debate, camp for days in the forest… and so on.
I believe that life is about pushing your limits in every way possible. Of course, trying to run a marathon with no training would be unreasonable. But I’m going after the second derivative: acceleration, not velocity. When I’m running, my mind can listen to my body saying that it’s tired and reply: “you make an excellent point… but we’re going to keep going anyway.” You can always do more than you think. Within certain constraints, you are capable of shaping your reality.
But other than for the unparalleled personal feeling of invincibility, I put myself through this type of mental training because it carries over into my impact on my surroundings, which is what I believe matters most. I am deeply conscious of how I’m part of an ecosystem, connected to other human beings and organisms, sharing with all of them one Home that provides us shelter, nourishment, and growth.
This Home feels like more than just the physical, tangible environment. There have been too many times in my life that things could have gone completely, shatteringly wrong… but they didn’t. By the smallest circumstance. Hence, I don’t believe in coincidence, and feel like there is something more than pure science. Whatever you call It, be that Spirit, Being, Force, or God, I feel like It has been pulling (or at least very lightly tapping) the strings of my life here and there.
What would have to happen for you to believe in something? The way that, for example, the apostles dropped everything and followed Jesus? Many say miracles. Experiencing and seeing it with your own eyes. Well, for me, I feel like that happens every day.
One term for It that I particularly align with is Mother Earth. When I’m in nature, I am utterly at peace. The connection feels elevated, spiritual, like I am completely in sync with the world around me and astounded by its beauty.
Hence, I have an intense feeling of gratitude that permeates every part of my being and that I see in the smallest details of life. It’s so strong that multiple times I’ve cried from the overwhelming amount of happiness that I was experiencing. Have you ever cried tears of joy?
Because of this, I feel responsible to It. I am acutely aware of my impact, my place as part of an interconnected group of living beings and feel responsible to every one of them. I feel responsible for stewarding and taking full advantage of what I’ve been given: not only my environment, but my talents and skills.
In practice, this means maximizing my impact by being incredibly purposeful with every aspect of my life: what I eat, what I say, who I surround myself with, how I spend my time. This means embedding beauty and adventure into every moment. This means pushing my limits. This means bringing 20/10 intensity to everything that I do.
It includes not only physical and mental, but also emotional intensity. My emotional life is a rollercoaster rather than a lazy river. For every time that I’ve cried tears of joy, I’ve cried from profound, heart-wrenching sorrow. The cost of having such high highs is having such low lows.
A few days ago, I asked a close friend of mine what the highlight of his week was. He said it was when a girl that he really liked ended their “situationship”. I didn’t understand how that could be a highlight, so he said: “if you look at a chart of my levels of emotion, without assigning positive or negative values, that discussion was a spike in emotion, and the fact that I was able to feel so strongly is so fundamentally human and so wonderfully beautiful.”
Whenever I face a low point, I strive to see the intensity of feeling as beautiful, because it’s part of what it means to truly live and because it pushes me to grow. And if I’m growing, I’m becoming a better version of myself, which allows me to have a bigger, more positive impact.
But living life with such intensity means I struggle with doing anything that requires me to be “chill”. I often prioritize my impact on others, and actively finding moments of beauty, over my own health. I will always say yes to experiences. If I have a choice between getting a few extra hours of sleep vs. waking up early to train, or staying up late in deep discussion with my suitemates, or going to a friend’s performance,… I can sleep when I’m dead.
But if I don’t sleep, I will be dead sooner. I have to force myself to rest; to remember that if I don’t take care of myself first, I can’t take care of anyone else. Taking care of myself maximizes impact. It allows me to experience more highs, bringing me more happiness and energy, which lets me do more and rubs off on other people.
When I fail to steward my own health, and when I feel uninspired or unfulfilled, I reevaluate what it means to live my life with purpose. This creates a constant effort of identifying what is important, eliminating everything that isn’t, and upholding these values, regardless of society’s standards. I believe that to lack intention; to not have opinions, preferences, goals, originality, depth; to be afraid of confrontation; to take the route of least resistance…that is merely existing, not living. If you choose to hang out on a beach sipping a cocktail, or prioritize an uninteresting but stable job, do it intentionally, having taken the time and gone through the motion of determining this is how you live your life with purpose. Whatever you choose, commit to it, and commit to it fully. If you don’t have purpose, you are going with the flow. Only dead fish go with the flow.
I believe that life deserves your full effort. It deserves to be truly appreciated. It deserves to be lived at the extremes of the human experience. So when I run a marathon, when I feel the power of what I’m capable of, the beauty of the process, and the certainty that I can go further than I ever have before… I know I am alive.