What Is Life...?

What is life?

I think this is a question we can all admit to asking ourselves at least once in our lifetime. For me, I constantly ask this. What is life? What is the meaning of life? Do I have a purpose? Is the purpose of living really just to survive until the end?

Yesterday my cat was put to sleep, it was so unexpected as only the day before he had been perfectly fine. Alive, vibrant, healthy. And then in an instant gone from the world. He won’t be remembered, just like the millions upon millions of animals and humans that die each year, he will be remembered by a few and slowly his memory will fade with the people that knew him.

But this had gotten me thinking, is this is all life is really about? Should we really care what if we are remembered? Should we really only live to please others?

Some people want a simple life, to be mothers and fathers, to own a nice house and to live peacefully. Some of us want extra ordinary adventures, some of us want the kind of life that terrifies and exhilarates us. We want the kind of life only most could think of in their dreams.

Who is really to say that life should be lived one way and not another though? There is such beauty in the way most organisms on earth live. They live to survive. They live for themselves. They live to carry on. They have to fight every day for their survival, with their heart pumping, their adrenaline pumping through their bodies.

Humans have become almost immune to this feeling, this need for survival. Most of us have it so easily that we have become lazy to the way things should truly be. Would you rather have a life that is short and filled with love, excitement, passion and adventure or a long lonely life?

Of course, everyone’s passions are different, but that is what is lacking from modern day society. We are too used to being governed by society, taking orders from the people who are higher in the pecking order than us. We are driven by selfishness and greed, we are driven by insignificant pieces of paper. We have to pay for our food, our leisure, our water. Everything has a ‘price.’ But this isn’t about money for the corporations, it is about power. They want your submission.

What many people don’t realize is that there is no price tag on life, you can live without being controlled by a small, inconsequential piece of paper.

Life is about survival, about fighting to live, it’s about being absolutely terrified and yet still making that decision. It’s about driving forward through the difficult times, pushing yourself further and further, not for others, but for yourself.

Live is about truly living, not just existing like we seem content to do today.

We need to step out of our comfort zones, stop letting corporations and society control us. We need live for ourselves and experience the true art of living.

Life is not about how many breaths we take. It is about how many moments take our breath away.

You can have a passionate, extraordinary life full of adventure, full of love and full of everything you ever dreamed of if only you have the courage to step outside you comfort zone to do it.

Everyone can have this. Everyone. The circumstances of one’s birth are irrelevant, it is what you do with the gift of life that determines who you truly are. 

Life Begins at The End of Your Comfort Zone

From a young age I’ve always loved writing, I’ve always written my own stories, my own poems and songs, but somewhere along the way due to mental illness I lost writing, I lost a part of myself. That’s why I’m here now, trying to regain that piece of myself.

This blog will be about what matters to me, my experiences and my beliefs as well as what is going on it the world. It will be used to try and inspire people and show you that none of you are alone, that really, we all have somebody. Whether that person is me, a small town girl from England or a hot shot movie star we admire on television, we all have somebody who inspires us, who makes us strive to be a better person.

The problem in the world today though is that nobody really wants to be that person, the person everyone looks to, nobody wants to be that voice, that inspiration. Nobody cares enough about the next person to want to bring them up and to push them in the right direction.

We live in a society that mocks people who are different, who want to help others. Unfortunately we live in a condescending society that mocks the good and enforces that we be selfish and vindictive, that we can only care about ourselves.

As someone who is a veteran at suffering from mental illness, I have a passion for helping people, to inspire them, because I would hate for anyone to feel as low as I do. I would hate for anyone to feel like they have nobody, so if even one person can relate here, or feel that they are not alone through reading these words, then my goal has been achieved.

This morning, I woke up, I pulled on my old leggings and a holey shirt as usual, put on my slippers and lumbered down the stairs. I stared at the cupboards deciding if I was too fat to eat today, deciding whether I should starve my body of the vital nutrients it needs to survive. I then decided to eat and I lumbered back up the stairs to bed, filled with only the emptiness, the extended abyss of despair that fills my life.

I laid in bed as usual, playing on my phone, going on facebook, talking to my friends. And for some reason while talking to one of them I came to the realization that I don’t have to be like this forever. Happiness is a choice. Yes, the demons may always be there, but they can be managed. They can be fought. It may be a long process, and some days I may not even want to get out of bed for fear of what those demons may tell me.

But. That is life.

And life is a beautiful thing, how can we even begin to comprehend what we are? My problems in comparison to the universe are nothing. Compared to the vastness of all that exists, they are nothing. I exist in a universe on what is essentially a rock, my problems will have no meaning when I’m gone, so why focus on them? Why let them rule my life? Why let them eat away at my soul?

For too long I have let them chip away at my very being, taking away things I love, my art, my writing, my confidence, and making me push away those I love to the point that I lose them, all because I am too afraid to step away from the darkness of my own mind into the light.

Life is not about how many breaths we take; it is about how many moments take out breaths away. Life begins at the end of your comfort zone and I intend to live!

Special Mentions:

Danny Morris- For being an amazing boyfriend who supports me for all of my bullshit.

Helen Chambers- For starting her blog and inspiring me to write again.