"Live Life to the Fullest"

“Live life to the fullest.”

“Cherish every second.”

“Tell your loved ones you love them.”

“Enjoy every minute of every day.”

“Tomorrow is not promised.”

And on it goes. Is it true?

Absolutely.

But I’m gonna tell you, it’s stressing me out.

I don’t live every second to the fullest. I mean, who can? I have a lot of boring seconds in my life, extending to minutes and hours filled with doing things I don’t necessarily enjoy such as cleaning, going to the dentist, doing laundry, and you get the picture. I try to tell myself I’m one of the lucky ones who gets to do all these mundane and sometimes painful things, but I wouldn’t exactly classify it as living every second to the fullest.

I don’t constantly tell people I love them, although I was never bad at doing that anyway. But there are some people you’re just going to regret not saying it enough to because, believe it or not, they’re simply not receptive.

I realize all too well that tomorrow is not promised, and that in itself is stressful and scary, don’t you think? If you go to bed every night knowing tomorrow isn’t promised, do you think you’re not going to be a little concerned until you wake up the next day?

And let’s face it, how many of us have enough money to actually live life to the fullest. We do the best we can, but we have to pick and choose the things we do for pleasure since we don’t have endless funding.

But even more than all this is the fact that we all have things that happen to us which make us sad or afraid or cause us physical and/or emotional pain. And sometimes we can’t even put our finger on what exactly is making us unhappy or if we do know, we’re unsure how to change it. When I’m in that place and I read sentiments like those above, the exact opposite of the intent occurs. I feel worse because I’m upset over something silly or perhaps I’ve been frustrated by my attempts to change something. It doesn’t really shift my perspective as intended. I actually feel worse because now it feels like I’m blowing things out of proportion. A cloudy day makes me feel sad, for goodness sake, and I do my best to pull myself out of the funk, but it’s not always easy.

Maybe “live your life to the fullest” includes acceptance of those darker moments as well as the beautiful, enriching ones, because without those moments, how would we even understand appreciation and happiness.

Please don’t send me hate mail about this blog. It might actually be good to know I’m not alone in feeling this way.