Live Life

When asked "What thing about humanity surprises you the most?", Dalai Lama answered: "Man, because he sacrifices his health in order to make money; then sacrifices his money to recuperate his health. Then he is so anxious about the future that he doesn't enjoy the present, and as a result, he doesn't live in the present or the future. And he lives as if he's never going to die and then dies having never really lived

People do the strangest things. We will do almost anything to get money, including sacrificing our health. And then spend that money on sorting ourselves out again, both mentally and physically. We treat getting money as if it is the most important thing for us to do. But we finally get it, we find out the true cost of it. We find out that when we neglect our health, we will have to pay for that. And the cost may be greater than the money we have received.

We so often get anxious about the future. We save for a rainy day. We insure all our belongings just in case something happens in the future. We lock our doors. But while we are doing that we are forgetting about all the good things that are happening right now. We can't enjoy the present when we aren't even aware of what is around us because we are thinking about what might happen in the future. And we can't live in the future because we don't know what will happen. We don't live in the present and can't live in the future, so we don't really live at all.

We live as though we are never going to die. We are so afraid of death that we don't even think about it. We don't plan for it. We don't appreciate the life we have yet we don't want it to ever end. We don't want to take any risks we feel we don't have to; just in case we do end our lives. So we die having never really lived. It is only by realizing that we could die any minute, which is the case after all, that we can really appreciate our life for what it is. A beautiful but short time what we should really make the most of while we are here.

There is a better way to live. We can put money in it's proper place in our priorities. Nothing is more important than our health. If we aren't healthy, we'll never enjoy our money anyhow. We can be fully aware of the present, of what is happening inside and outside of us right now, so that we can enjoy all it has to offer. We can live fully in the present. And finally we can realize just how precious and short our life really is and resolve to get as much out of it as we can while we are still here. Only then can we really live our life.