Live a Little

Life is short. We never know when we will meet our end. When that time comes would you rather people say he/she enjoyed the time given or life had just begun for them, there was so much they hadn’t done yet? Would you rather know you did the best you could at what you did and experienced the world around you, or wish you would have done and seen more?

It is all up to you.

At the beginning of When Harry Met Sally there is a scene where Harry asks Sally to tell him her life story as they set out from Chicago to New York. Sally replies that there is nothing to tell, her story is just beginning in New York and she has not done anything up to this point in her life.

To this I want to say “really? Have you been living under a rock?”. She has made these great plans of what she wants her life to look like and everything up through her college graduation has just been prep for this great adventure she has mapped out in her mind. But what if she never made it to New York? What if something happened to her on the way to the starting point for this great adventure? She would have spent her life preparing to live but not actually living it.

Sometimes we do that in our everyday lives. We get so caught up in everything we do on a daily basis that we forget there’s a big world around us waiting to be explored. We start planning our days, weeks, months, and even years ahead so that we know what to expect and and what we need to do; but are we really helping to ease our anxieties and fears? Instead we transfer our fears and anxiety to those plans not being perfect or being interrupted.

We get stuck in ruts, doing the same thing day in and day out. We get caught in the rat race of life. Slowly we start to forget our adventure. We start to see the world through a grey haze and the larger wonders start to fade. We stick to rules like dinner first then dessert and wearing matching socks. We get bogged down in the details of our days and start to lose sight of the bigger picture.

What if we stopped to smell the roses instead of focusing on the number of steps we are getting? What if we took a different path to work one day a week? Or what if we ate dessert first and wore mismatched socks?

They are all little thing but yet they are huge when you think about breaking free from the ruts we dig ourselves into. They are ways to live a little and experience life, not just live and survive.

Sure taking a vacation is a great way to get away and reset. And when we are able to travel or at least take some time off we do feel refreshed and adventurous, but then we return to the rut, the mundane. How can we take a vacation everyday? It is possible through finding those ways to live.

By adding a little bit of life to your life, stepping away from the calendar and schedule you are freer to live a little. It does not have to be anything major either. It might be going out for dinner and ordering dessert first or wearing mismatched socks. It might be changing your hair style or buying a different color shirt or pants than you normally would. Anything to add some color and take out the grey.

Maybe it is remembering or returning to things you enjoyed in your past. Maybe pull out the bucket list or the someday list and actually start doing them. The best way to ensure you will never accomplish them is to never try them.

Add a little color and spice to your life. Live a little. Get out of your box and push the edges of your comfort zone. And don’t worry about what others think. Most of the time they just wish they had thought of it first. You will be glad you did.

It was John Lennon who said, “life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans”.