Learning How to Live

• Marcus Aurelius said, “It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.” How often do we allow the problems that we face daily hold us back from what we want or what will make us truly happy? Happiness holds a key to beginning to live the life we are entitled to. We are all entitled to a greatness which we all possess inside of us. We just need to see where that greatness will lead us. I want to live a life with no regrets. I want to truly live as if tomorrow will never come.
• Kahlil Gibran stated “Your living is determined not so much by what life brings to you as by the attitude you bring to life; not so much by what happens to you as by the way your mind looks at what happens.” Attitude can change the outcome to any situation. Optimism can lead to positive outlook, and pessimism can always lead to disaster. Everything is how you choose to view it. Humor can always be a means of showing a positive attitude, and things don’t always seem so bad. I don’t always see the cup half full, but I am learning to refrain from viewing it as half empty.
• Friedrich Nietzsche declared “We love life, not because we are used to living but because we are used to loving.” We must first be able to love ourselves before others can love us. Sometimes learning to love ourselves is the hardest, because we were not taught to value ourselves and all we can accomplish. We, then, learn to love those that are in our daily life. Once we develop a love for our family and friends, we can develop a different kind of love, a compassion for the strangers that pass briefly in our lives. I find that I am not the most lovable of creatures, but I can be viewed as a person containing compassion toward those around me.
• Socrates acknowledged, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Daily we must examine where we are in life and what we want. If we don’t like something in our life, then a change is inevitable. I always believed if you don’t like something in life, don’t moan and complain about it unless you are prepared to do something about it. I was told as a child that I was hard to get to know because I was always changing. I say I evolve into a different form of me.
• Ralph Waldo Emerson believed, “The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.” Life’s greatest lessons are best learned trial and error. Rising above the problems is not necessarily easy. They can be the foundation of the person you should be. There are moments where the failures seem more than the accomplishments. That isn’t so. You must look deeper into the failure for there is an accomplishment hiding seeking to be found.
• Voltaire quoted, “We never live; we are always in the expectation of living.” For me I am learning to live with the expectations I place upon myself and not the expectations of others. The outside world cannot provide happiness for us. We must first seek it among ourselves. Once we obtain a certain amount of love for our personal selves we can learn to love the world around us. This is the key to obtaining the happiness of a life well lived.