My Life's Purpose
Suppose you had only 3 years left to live, would you change the way you live your life? When posed this question, the responses were “quit my job”, “travel the world”, “go to church”. Or perhaps 3 years is still a fairly long period. How about a year or 6 months or even 30 days. What then are the changes you would make to your life? Then someone asked an interesting question in return. Would you really want to know when you were going to die? My answer: No.
Personally I do not allow myself any room for regret. I made a mistake once where I wish I had chosen otherwise. Thankfully, I was able to make up for that but the pain that followed during that time before, was tremendous. From then on, I pretty much didn’t allow myself to regret. However, I did make a second mistake where I regret it deeply too but I will never be able to turn this one around. Perhaps this is my form of escapism from facing the question of whether I had lived my life meaningfully and purposefully. But I find that this approach to life helps make it less worrisome for me.
There is a principle I live by. Never ever make the same mistake twice. Once - you apologise and you learn from it. Twice - maybe the lesson didn’t come home hard. But on the third time, that’s just sheer stupidity. So in a way, I’m guessing these all somehow connect. That my desire to live without the pain of regret drives my behaviour, and that what I have done was always the best and nothing less.
Are there important things that I would want to do if I knew my days were numbered? My answer is no because if they were that important to me, I would have done them now already. I do admit that it sounds kind of passive because then there might not be that very many important things to me. To say that there is nothing I would change or would want to go back to the past and undo certain things or redo certain things differently, is a pretty big thing. For me, it’s done and I wouldn’t do it any differently if I had to walk the same way because it was the best choice I made at that time with the knowledge I had at that time. Actually, now that I think of it, it sounds kind of arrogant. But to me, I live life now and I will not do it any differently anyway because if I did do that, then why don’t I simply change it now.
Sometimes I’m not sure why I am even the way I am. Maybe it’s the fear of failure, or the need to feel that I did right, to fill up that esteem. I think I am passive in that sense, but in other areas, I would like to take a more proactive stance. Perhaps in this whole approach, I would have failed living life meaningfully and purposefully then. Kinda sad thinking about this now.
So, what is your life’s purpose? What would you change if you knew you had a limited time left on earth? Would you live differently? Why did these things suddenly matter and become so important that you would prioritise them? I suggest that you do those things now because your time is indeed limited and you never know if you might live another day and get a second opportunity to do all that you decided to, knowing you were gonna die soon.
Personally I do not allow myself any room for regret. I made a mistake once where I wish I had chosen otherwise. Thankfully, I was able to make up for that but the pain that followed during that time before, was tremendous. From then on, I pretty much didn’t allow myself to regret. However, I did make a second mistake where I regret it deeply too but I will never be able to turn this one around. Perhaps this is my form of escapism from facing the question of whether I had lived my life meaningfully and purposefully. But I find that this approach to life helps make it less worrisome for me.
There is a principle I live by. Never ever make the same mistake twice. Once - you apologise and you learn from it. Twice - maybe the lesson didn’t come home hard. But on the third time, that’s just sheer stupidity. So in a way, I’m guessing these all somehow connect. That my desire to live without the pain of regret drives my behaviour, and that what I have done was always the best and nothing less.
Are there important things that I would want to do if I knew my days were numbered? My answer is no because if they were that important to me, I would have done them now already. I do admit that it sounds kind of passive because then there might not be that very many important things to me. To say that there is nothing I would change or would want to go back to the past and undo certain things or redo certain things differently, is a pretty big thing. For me, it’s done and I wouldn’t do it any differently if I had to walk the same way because it was the best choice I made at that time with the knowledge I had at that time. Actually, now that I think of it, it sounds kind of arrogant. But to me, I live life now and I will not do it any differently anyway because if I did do that, then why don’t I simply change it now.
Sometimes I’m not sure why I am even the way I am. Maybe it’s the fear of failure, or the need to feel that I did right, to fill up that esteem. I think I am passive in that sense, but in other areas, I would like to take a more proactive stance. Perhaps in this whole approach, I would have failed living life meaningfully and purposefully then. Kinda sad thinking about this now.
So, what is your life’s purpose? What would you change if you knew you had a limited time left on earth? Would you live differently? Why did these things suddenly matter and become so important that you would prioritise them? I suggest that you do those things now because your time is indeed limited and you never know if you might live another day and get a second opportunity to do all that you decided to, knowing you were gonna die soon.