“Often a very old man has no other proof of his long life than his age.”

― Lucius Annaeus Seneca, On the Shortness of Life

I think it is fair to say that we all are scared of becoming another statistic for this quote. Nothing to proof our long lives but our age.

A life of regret sounds scarier than a life filled with dangerous but rewarding experiences.

I used to be, or still am really concerned with living a vain life, a normal and boring life, filled with nothing but expectations and the constant pleasing of people. Specially because, what does living a full life even mean?

My ex-girlfriend used to ask me the question, what do you want out of life? I became mad every time she asked because to be honest, I didn’t had a precise answer, making money and marry, I guess? Please, that’s a canned answer.

I’ve come to realize that their are many things that I want out of life, just as you I’m sure, but I was to scared to actually say it out loud. I want to write a book, I want to develop my business career, have a Master’s, maybe a kid,I want to write a song. The immensity of possibility that we have is just endless.

I’ve come to realize that we are adventurers my friend, in all the heavy sense of the world.

Imagine your life as the ocean. The ocean is filled with treasures and paradisaical islands, it is filled with sharks and storms and Bermuda’s triangles as well. Navigating through the ocean is not easy, but there is hardly anything more rewarding that reaching home as Odysseus did after 10 years of being lost and facing all the challenges imaginable.

But my life is not Homer’s Odyssey you might say, but in this sense you are very wrong, because your life is just an adventure as the Odyssey, but different and unique to you and your situation. Full of trials and monsters and treasures. Presented as tax forms, business plans to be made and fail, bureaucracy, and all the obstacles you need to overcome to achieve your dreams. You are already here, and you are all in because you are going to die.

How are you living your life? Really? afraid of the monsters that might bite you if you set sail? If so, you will never get to your treasure islands, you will stay safe and boring and with nothing to prove your long life but your age.

There are many islands my friend, the fun is not so much in the treasures you’ll definitely get if you brace yourself for the adventure, but in the man/woman you’ll become by doing so, that is the true reward.

We are adventurers, we are explorers. You live a full life by responding to the calling, just start.

What do you like? What islands are you able to see from where you are? Do you see the dangers? The storms to come? Choose where you want to go and prepare to sail through the scary ocean, you might get lost, you might get bitten, but you will live and there is nothing else as good as living a full life. A unique life.

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

Through the unknown, remembered gate

When the last of earth left to discover

Is that which was the beginning;

At the source of the longest river

The voice of the hidden waterfall

And the children in the apple-tree

Not known, because not looked for

But heard, half-heard, in the stillness

Between two waves of the sea.” ― T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets



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