When we think about our life, we usually think about it in a form of a story.
First we were born and then we did some things and made some memories and now we're here and we work at our job or whatever. But we intend to do more stuff in the future, maybe see the planet, and save enough cash for a nice retirement.
In a sort of narrative structure like this, with the beginning, a middle and an eventual end, we all seem to see our lives.
That kind of makes sense because it allows us to make sense of where we are now by focusing on the past, and by having hopes and aspirations for the future, it gives us something to look forward to, something to prepare for, and if we don't like our current condition at present, we can put our pains and frustrations on the promise of a better tomorrow.
Yet it feels entirely different if you think about what it feels like to really live life, like what it feels like on a day-to-day basis. We're kind of just waking up, we're kind of groggy, we're stumbling downstairs, we're having coffee, we're jumping in the shower, we're getting ready, we're going to get the bread before we get in the car.
And after you get the bread, since you have an addiction, you get more bread at McDonald's and then you come home, usually pretty tired, and you veg out and watch Netflix or whatever you do before you go to bed.
Living life typically feels like this to most people most of the time. Life is usually fairly normal in general. You do the things you do daily, you have a routine or pattern that you adhere to, and life isn't typically crazy inspiring or mind-blowing, it's just sort of a day-to-day experience.
But is there something wrong with it? I mean, social media has us believing that everybody's hanging out all the time on yachts, going on wild adventures, trying out Southeast Asia's 2,000 different bananas, and everybody's getting married to their dream boy, popping out the most handsome boys.
But that's not reality. It's a reel of highlights. And these highlights that we continuously ingest from the people we watch on Instagram or the movies we watch on Netflix, these highlights start to really impact the story that we tell us about our own lives.
At least our lives have lived to their fullest potential as a life with as many of these highlights in it as possible, so the days when these amazing, crazy things don't happen, we see that as suboptimal in some way.
Our great days turn into hopes, and our average days become dull, as if we were wasting our potential, as if we were wasting our lives away.
But this story we tell ourselves, this adventure life, no one's life is like this, not Dwayne Johnson, not Elon Musk.
Sure, these guys do some pretty cool, meaningful stuff more often than we do, but they still do most of their lives, they just kind of get up, they do a lot of things they don't want to do, they sweat it out, they work hard, they're really irritated or stressed out often. They're still pooping, and they still need to eat.
In this sort of day to day monotony, most of their lives occur. Except when Elon Musk fantasizes about avoiding the day-to-day routine and taking a break, instead of the Bahamas, he's thinking Mars, they're living life in the very same way you are.
Assuming you get eight hours of sleep every night, which I'm sure you do, you have just about 16 hours to live because you're only one day at a time living life.
That little part of time between taking your head off the pillow and placing it back down again, and all that stuff seems kind of natural and kind of inconsequential in between, that's all life is, it's just that thing over and over and over and over again.
And this, depending on how you look at it, can sound super sad or super inspiring.
It can be depressing. Of course, if you don't like those 16 hours, a lot of us are usually slaves to our bad habits. We're doing stuff we don't want to do. We work jobs that we don't really like and we're put in some financial or social conditions that we don't really like being in.
So, every single day, day after day, is something we don't normally want to do. This is why we fantasize so much about the future. We're all waiting to live our actual lives, and if that's all there is, then it's super sad, obviously.
But there is a silver lining, because it's not as big of a feat to change your whole life as you would think it is. Since life is lived in these tiny 16-hour mini episodes, that's great for a very manageable amount of time.
We can begin to develop routines that we really want to do and that are good for us, and we can train ourselves to make decisions that are really consistent with our beliefs and allow us to be the person we want to be every day.
And a good life is just a series of good days, not necessarily days when everything went our way and nothing was complicated or frustrating, but days when our system was working.
Maybe it's making one good habit at a time so that the things that keep you grounded and satisfied and your mood lifted, start to become stuff that you do automatically, so you eat something a bit memorable and that you're proud of.
Viewing life on a micro scale like this often gives insight to the little decisions we make all day long. If you've always wanted to be a more social person, then when you get the invitation, that means saying yes to beers with the guys today.
That’s it for today, I appreciate you time.