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Facing death, you have nothing to lose. The last thing you’ll ever wanted to lose, your life, will be taken from you.
The moment you hear you are going to die is the moment you start living. You won’t lose, you’ll win. Dying is a known factor, which means that it starts to matter what you do until you die. When you have nothing to lose, the only thing you can do is winning.
Unfortunately, you won’t die any time soon. You have things to lose. But when will you start winning?
Life is pretty fucking long. Everybody keeps blabla-ing about life being short, but those are the people who realize life’s been long until it is too late. Then, life is short. Imagine the things you can do in an hour. What do you do in a day? How much do you produce in forty hours? How many seas can you cross in a month? How many mountains can you move in eighty years? Life is long.
There’s another source of blabla coming from people who have found happiness. They can’t stop talking about it. It’s in the path towards victory. In little things. In friendship. Fuck path’s, fuck little things, fuck friendship. Happiness is a whole different thing for a whole lot of people. Don’t comfort others by admitting they’re happy.
Fact. You’ll live eighty years. Stay optimistic. You’ve spent a significant amount on bullshit. Fact. You can be happy. Fact. There are things that make you happy. Find them.
Picture this. You’re thirty-five. Your life sucks. You work 32 hours a week, five days. You live in the weekends, getting drunk, feeling like you have a day off. You meet friends, talking about how life could have been. Avoiding work related thoughts. You’re divorced or married, but neither satisfies you. The zeroes on your account nearly fix the mortgage. Your daughter is a prepubescent princess, having more influence than you. Your boss is in charge of your career, so he yells at you on a daily basis. And what more is there? Nothing. Your life sucks.
Then you get diagnosed with a life threatening disease. You’ll die in two months. You get to live for one year.
What do you do? First you resist. Then you stop complaining. You burn all your useless friendships. You’ll get off Facebook. You’ll chat up with a stranger. You quit working, starting to trade time for money. You make your list. The bucketlist. All the things you wanted to do. You’ll get a loan to make a trip around the world. You’ll play a game of chess with that guy in the pub around the corner. You’ll make the world-trip. It’s terrific.
You’ll say your last famous words. You can’t think of any. Then you die.
Has it been worthwile? Yes. You finally did what mattered. You lived. It doesn’t matter what you do or how you do it. It matters that you live.
Listen to me. You will die. The only chance you get at beating death, is by living. Make your bucketlist. Make hundreds of them. Say your last famous words. Get out of your lazy chair. Start kicking ass. Quit your job. Start doing things that matter. Start living.
You've got to find what you love. Who you love. Don’t look for happiness. It’ll come to you.
You’ll die tomorrow. So make today count.
(I wrote this a few years ago, and I've read it regularly ever since. I'm well aware that this may not work for you, but I wanted to share it because it might. Also, I do not mean to offend. Somebody's got to kick you in the balls.)