Most of us actually hardly manage to mark the difference between these two and yet there is a significant one.
Not knowing the difference between living and existing shapes our lives according to the meaning that we give to these two words.
By definition, existing means that we are here in the World but not really enjoying life and seeing the different hues of life. We can sum it up by saying that existing is getting done what needs to get done, nothing more, nothing less to it! There is actually no life in existing. What exists is the leftover of life, the thoughts, the ideas…
It is when we exist that we are most affected by whatever comes our way, we depresss, we are in a hurry racing with the time, we forget our relationships.
We do what we think should get done yet we have already gone off road, forgotten what really matters the most.
While living, on the other hand, means that we are present and involved in every second of our lives.
Muhammad Ali,a well known Boxer of all times stated that we shouldn’t count the days but should make the days count.This simply encourages us to live every moment of our lives, making each second really count.
With the speed at which the World moves nowadays, it has become really hard to focus on the other side of life besides the office (work) and everything else that revolves around money.
At the end of the day, we have worked so hard, got what we needed or maybe not, but actually fail to enjoy the fruits of our hardwork, we still feel as empty after all.
Life has become a routine: waking up-work-exhaustion-sleeping kind of cycle that shuts us down from what is really happening in the real world, that routine keeps us in a kind of “boxed life”.
The life we have should be lived unlimitedly, every second that makes it should be felt and received, we should embrace all that it brings us; emotions,laughter,memories,relationships,adventure,resting,helping around us, taking chances, and the list goes on and on.
There comes a time in our lives when we have to let go of all the pointless drama and the people who create it and surround ourselves with people who make us laugh so hard that we forget the bad and focus solely on the good.
After all life is too short to be anything but happiness. Struggles, bad surprises always occur in our lives but they are just a transition, they are also part of the life we live. Nevertheless they shouldn’t take our passion for life away from us.
Most of us do exist and do not live. We ought to take a break, relax and enjoy all the gifts life presents to us, because as Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the USA said “In the end, it is not about the years in your life that count, it is the life in your years”.
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