It was a casual discussion with friends over tea and the conversation revolved around one question…”Are we living or existing?” Profound question indeed!
Though I honestly wanted to have an easier topic for the first blog post, I could not stop thinking about it. So here is my attempt at thinking out loud.
“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.” – Oscar Wilde
Some say it is the ‘dreams’ that differentiate living from existing. Some say it is the ‘control over life’ that makes living empowering over mere existing. Some suggest that if we have ‘power to drive’, then we are living; and if we are watching our life elapsing from the back-seat, then we are quite simply existing.
No doubt, they are all correct. But before we get into answering the ‘bigger’ question, there are some ‘simpler’ questions that we need to ask ourselves:
How do I feel right now?
How do I want to feel?
Am I even ‘existing’ consciously?
If we have answers to these then we are on a right path. If not, then this is where we need to begin our journey of contemplation.
First step is to acknowledge and have gratitude that we ‘exist’; add feelings to it and we are naturally on the second step – existing consciously. Next when we start feeling happy in existing consciously, we start to have dreams.
And once one of those dreams start keeping us up at night, we start ‘living’!
“Dream Dream Dream…Dreams transform into thoughts and thoughts result in actions.” – A P J Abdul Kalam
Until we start ‘living’, let’s thank ourselves for ‘existing’.
Stay well and stay inspired!
~ Piyush
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Unfortunately very few people think or write What you have asked…whether we are existing or living.. as it is more or less synonyms for most of the people. So if I rephrase it by asking whether we are living our true self or not… As we all are so strongly conditioned to think and live by our social conditioning and stick to “no change “and ignoring our within…
keep writing… 🙂
Thanks for sharing your thoughts Shweta!
Everyday we are confronted with opportunities, there are those who choose to acknowledge and act on these. They are living.
Then there are those who go through life not seeing any opportunity because they are busy thinking about what was missed yesterday. They are existing.
You don’t need to take all opportunities. Just acknowledge them and select wisely.
Well said Sir!
Well, I am still thinking about the answer..
Nice article. Thought provoking !!!
thanks Preethi! 🙂
Very Inspiring Sir 👍
thanks buddy! 🙂