LIVING DEEPLY

Henry David Thoreau was really right when he once said that, at some points in our lives, we have to "live deeply" to truly discover the core of our very own existence. Living deeply, as I have understood it, is to live our life in our own little ways. Some live happily within their own comfort zones. Others usually keep fraction of their time to be all alone. This doesn't mean that they are lonely, so they opt to ignore the world. Being alone and being lonely don't go both ways at all times. Whatever it is, living deeply tells something about how we truly understand our "conscious" being.

With that short span of time that our Creator has spared life to us, we are entitled to be happy, to live deeply. We are not bound to make this life the best, owing to what others and the society dictate to us. We don't have to remain blind about the transitoriness of our joys, pains and flesh. In short, we have to acknowledge that death is the corollary of life, as what Leo Tolstoy shared to us. In Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich, he significantly poses a challenge for us to live our ways, and not on others' dictates. If we do this, the more chances that we take pleasure in going back the good old times by the time we're going to be bedridden and unable to look life forward but to see it in its opposite direction.

Life is the grandest present human ever received. But, one unpleasant thing about this is death's coming. Life right here is temporal and incomplete. Death is what makes life complete. It's definitely an inconvenient truth that one, whether he likes it or not, has to face the inevitability of death. We cannot achieve such everlasting life without death. If we wished to live eternally, we have to recognize and to accept death the way we're catching up air to breathe in order to live. And, one way to examine death as compulsory is to try taking the course of Thoreau's "deep living." At first, it was Thoreau's experimentation in Walden whether life could still be well-lived with only the essentials of life despite the isolation, silence, simplicity and distance from society. Apparently, what values he is trying to impart is to live life with our own deliberation, with self-reliance, away from society.

What is essential in living deeply is our understanding that we are here for a reason. Tiny as we are, we still have our own spot in this vast and mysterious universe. Our existence is meant for something which we cannot fully discover unless we are not stepping into its core. Perhaps, the ultimate manifestation of deep living is to live happily. Happiness is relative. It is a choice. As much as we can, we have to avoid such life as dictated by our significant others and the society. As possible, we have to look for answers to our life's most important questions outside the box, out of our comfort zones. We were born this way. We were born to be happy. We are not bound, indeed, but we do always have a choice to live deeply. And living deeply depends on how we see it that way or in any angle. Through it, we can truly discover that the best things in our life are best defined by our courage and willingness to see them firsthand.

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