I look at my life, and look at people around me and know, that most people die without having ever lived. What a painful tragedy. When I say most, I don’t have a sample to quote, but the proportions of these people would be over 90%. Over 90% of people have died, and will die without ever having lived.
Benjamin Franklin said:
“Some people die at 25 and aren’t buried until 75.”
That begs the question- what does it mean to live?
The dictionary has several definitions of what it means to live, like to pass life, or to maintain one’s existence. One of those that we will use for the purpose of this article, is to experience and enjoy life to the full.
To live, therefore, is to experience and enjoy life to the full.
Now, think about you and people around you. Do you think you are able to live or you are merely surviving, one day to another, one week to another, one month to next, one year to next, till you get old, and die?
Most people die without having ever lived, or experience joy and happiness in their lives. They are told that life is survival and they believe it. Someone tells them that their dreams are impractical and they believe them.
Therefore, they never chase their dreams. I read this morning in a quote in one of the books I have by Jack Canfield:
“Your dreams are your real job.”
Most people who die without having ever lived do not even dare to dream. They don’t bother to understand themselves, or try to find out what really makes them happy.
Why don’t they do that?
This song by Lily Meola is one of my favourite songs:
She says, that when we are kids, we believe we can achieve anything and then we are 18, and someone replaces our dreams with all sorts of fears.
Most people die without having ever lived because of endless fears
- Fears and anxieties like the below from within us, the society and our families take us to a point where we stop dreaming altogether:
- “How will I afford a car?”
- “Can I ever build a house?”
- “Everyone does a safe job.”
- “Money is everything. How do I make money?”
- “What will people think about me?”
- “Oh, I can’t become a singer/writer/comedian/entrepreneur. It’s too impractical. You need a lot of time and money and middle-class families can’t afford that.”
- “What will my family think of me if I take risks? Where will I go if they abandon me!”
- “And if I fail- where will I go then?”
- “What if nobody is interested in my dream?”
- “Who will I reach out to- nobody likes me?”
- “Why would anyone help me to achieve my dreams anyway?”
- “Nobody believes in me. Where do I get the strength to believe in myself?”
- “I have a family to run. Who will pay for the expenses?”
Yes, some of these fears are reasonable, and true. But that doesn’t mean we should all die, without having a shot at life and happiness. What an excruciating tragedy.
How do we create a society and families where happiness is the number one priority?
How do we stop surviving and start living?
In order to stop surviving and start living, we will have to make fundamental changes in the way we live and why we live. Why are we alive anyway?
We need to start agreeing that the purpose of life is to be happy. We are here to be happy.
Aristotle said:
“Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.”
We need to recreate the society and base them on the fundamentals of happiness. We need to start with happiness at the beginning of human life, and make children happier and more fulfilled. Happier children will make happier adults.
Why do most people die without having ever lived?
1. People die without ever having lived because they haven’t seen anyone in their family truly live
If you don’t have a reference point that happiness is possible, you will believe the opposite. You will grow up believing that life is painful, and the purpose is to somehow survive, reproduce, and pass the baton to the next generation, which is what 90% of the people in the world do.
They live a painful life and they pass the baton to the next generation to live another set of painful lives. After all, your parents didn’t know better. If they knew better, they would tell you to live, and not survive and die meaninglessly.
You are reading this and you don’t want to die without living or experiencing happiness.
Please, live.
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2. Most people die without having ever lived because they are erroneously told that money is the purpose of life
Some people do succeed in the eyes of the society and make money. But they find themselves still empty because their so-called success is empty and it wasn’t based on self-awareness or a sense of meaningful purpose driving their lives.
They think that material success like buying a house or a car only would make them happy and so they take on EMI’s to pay those expenses. In the end, they find that life is gone, and they are left with the things they bought with no joy in the years gone by.
Success isn’t happiness. Happiness is success.
3. People die without having ever lived because of lack of self-belief
Most people die without having ever lived because they don’t believe that they are able to achieve happiness, and they live in a state of fear and anxiety all their lives. They don’t think they are capable of living an extraordinary life, where all their dreams could come true only if they believed in themselves, and persisted in the pursuit of their dreams.
The history of human success proves that nobody has ever achieved anything without having believed they could. There is no way, you will get to truly live life and be happy if don’t believe in yourself, and your capability to make your wildest dreams come true.
Henry Ford said:
“Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t–you’re right.”
He was right. Thinking is everything, and if we think we can, we will find a way to make our dreams come true. Or else, we will join the army of people who die without having ever lived, and experienced joy.
4. Lack of emotional and financial resources kills dreams
Not everyone gets a great start. People who are fortunate to come from families with ample financial and emotional resources can take more risks, than those who don’t. Those who don’t, form the bulk of the world’s population.
If you aren’t privileged enough to come from a family that can support you emotionally or financially, you will have to build up some resources for yourself, so that you don’t join the dead mass of people who die without truly ever living and experiencing life in its abundance.
5. People die without ever having lived because nobody believes in them
Hey, let us be honest. Life is hard, for us to carry through it alone. Although we can give ourselves pep talks, and boost our morale and tell ourselves that we believe in ourselves, having someone who loves and believe in us makes a mountain of difference.
It is an unfortunate reality of life. The reason this happens is because there are so few people who have truly achieved anything substantial with their lives, and they are busy surviving. When they see you doing something out of the ordinary, they either don’t like it, or fear that you might succeed, and they would look like fools, and therefore, they discourage you.
If you want to make the world a better place where people don’t die without living yet, please don’t discourage anyone from their dreams. In fact, tell them, that you believe in them, and they can do what makes them happy, and may be your words would inspire them to go for their highest calling. Please do that, as much as possible.
The world needs more and more people who believe in the dreams of others, so that we can create a happier and fulfilling society, not a dead society filled with the living dead.
6. People die without having ever lived because they are so afraid of failure
You are afraid of failure. So, you take the safe path. The safe path kills you inside every day, and you feel like a dead person, but you can’t afford to take a risk because you don’t know what you will do if you fail.
But failure isn’t final, until you give up. I read somewhere that we don’t live in times where they kill you if you fail. You can come back to the safe path. It’s a crowded path as well, and you will find someone to get you along when you are back.
But you need to have a shot at life. Why won’t you allow yourself that, while you still can. You still can only till you are alive.
7. The general pretense makes people die inside while they tell others that they are happy
If the society is a bunch of pretentious fools, they are all working hard to impress each other. Pretentious people appreciate pretentious people. If you aren’t honest with yourself that you are dying inside, why would you want to do anything about it?
I see people all the time, and observe them. Although I am no one to judge anyone’s happiness, I know that alcohol doesn’t make people happy in the long run. Alcohol is a depressant. So is smoking. People who are high on depressants like smoking, alcohol pretend that it makes them happy, while all it does is make them forget their problems and makes them uninhibited for a while.
If you want to not join the clan of the living dead, be honest with yourself about your emotions. Stop pretending what you don’t feel.
8. People die inside every day to pay for the materialistic life
If you make $100, and spend $200 in a month to buy things that you can’t afford, and then work day and night at work that kills you to pay for the debt, you are the problem. You don’t need a lot of the things that come at a really high cost for your life.
An ostentatious, materialistic life is a curse. That is not the purpose of life.
The purpose of life is to be happy. Do not spend on things which do not make you happy inside.
9. If you don’t want to join the lot that would die without ever having lived, please make an effort to live
How do you make an effort to live? You can start with a bunch of things:
- Make a list of activities that make you happy
- See you if you can find a job doing one of those activities
- If you can’t find a job doing any of those, see if you can create a job for yourself- become an entrepreneur
- Improve your self-awareness and work on finding a purpose in life
- Spend time only with people who love and respect you and those you love and respect
- Find someone who believes in your dreams, and if possible, marry them. This may be the biggest thing you would do, for a life filled with happiness, because when you don’t, they will push you to be happy
- Do not ever accept that life is a compromise with survival and you cannot find happiness
- Never give up on your dreams, and your joy
- Trust yourself that you will find a way to be happy and you will NOT JOIN THE LIVING DEAD
These are things you can start with. I know, it’s hard but believing you can be happy and life can be happy is the starting point, to be happy.
In Conclusion- why most people die without having ever lived
Hey, trust me, I know, it is hard to break free from the clutches of survival and try to live a life to the fullest. I am on the same boat, as you are.
But we don’t have a choice to give up. We don’t. You and I do not want to join the countless those who never got to experience life in its beauty, and got stuck in the struggle for survival, till they had their last breath, or till, it was too late to live.
Why do I write this happiness blog?
The purpose of this blog is to help you find your happiness. Please read the other posts on the blog, and follow so that you get updates when new posts are published. Please share the post with your friends so that they can also find their happiness. If you have any feedback for me, please leave it in the comments and I would be happy to work on it. If you would like to support my writing and this blog, you may please send a donation through PayPal here.
I appreciate the time you spent in reading the blog and wish you happiness.
Love,
Amarvani
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