A Life Beyond Comfort

I’ve always hated the saying, “You only live once”. But it took me a while to truly understand what it means. The fear of experiencing new things always pulls me back from doing things that are outside of what I called “familiarity.” I once thought, “If you really only live once, then why do people go out of their way to do such reckless actions that can ruin the one precious life they were given?”

That cycle of familiarity repeats, slowly turning into comfort, and comfort into fear. Fear of change. Fear of the unknown. Fear of stepping outside of what feels safe. Fear of what might comes after. When I want to try something new, when I want to go out and don’t feel like it, when I want to dress a certain way and don’t feel as secure as I want to be. But then comes a bigger fear, the fear of not being able to recognize what I truly am. But you truly live once, and we shouldn’t waste it in the what ifs, in being stuck and afraid of trying something new. But it is pretty easy to forget we only have one life, I know I do.

And in that forgetfulness, we tend to lose ourselves in the prison that we trapped ourselves in: the idea of not being accepted. But I have a bigger fear; the horror of not experiencing being truly alive, the horror of time passing by and not leaving a mark. Not a temporary mark, but a mark you leave with people for a lifetime. We all live once, but we can have many lives in this one life. Therefore, I’m kind to myself. I’m kind with life and experience it the most I can while being scared, because what’s worse than not experiencing life when it’s what we’re meant to do? Regret of not doing it or having regret after doing it , it’s a double edged sword. But I would rather have the comfort of knowing that I was daring enough to escape familiarity.

What does that motto mean to me? It means do it scared, do it with regrets, do it without hesitation.