Living Well

One of my primary goals is to learn to live well.

Learning to live is a process. The only way to learn to live is to go through it. But to expand beyond existence to living--and living well--is a true challenge that requires focus and discipline.

My hope is that soon, the focus and discipline will create habits of what, at this point, seems unnatural and soon I will find myself living well, naturally.

At first, it seems like all work, but then there are small victories where I realize that I'm fulfilling my objective--through the process--and that I am living a well life.

It's then that I realize that I'm also experiencing happiness, joy and peace...and they all seem to be the byproducts of the effort I have exerted to learn how to live a well-lived life.

I find that living well is a daily--even momentary--choice. But it is worth the effort and the rewards are eternal.

Why Am I Afraid to Live?

Why is it that I fear the only thing I truly desire--my own happiness? What causes me to create my dreams and then fear their achievement so much that I'm willing to sit by as my mind deconstructs them with thoughts of inadequacies and failures that have yet to occur?

A friend said something tonight that struck me. He said, "It's the easiest way...to stand still."

I disagreed with him. Standing still is not the easiest way. It's not even the most comfortable. But it is the most comforting. Standing still allows me to play victim (to other people or to circumstances). Standing still lets me feel pitiful and therefore important (to myself at least).

The truth is momentum is the easiest way of life. Living--as an action verb--is the most comfortable way to be. Yet so few of us practice living. Most of us are so conditioned to be comforted with our own dream-dashing, that we fail to live the life we were meant to live.

What I am realizing:

We fear to live the life we dream, so we fail to live the life that is more than we can dream.