You can be alive but not living. Is it a weird idea? They seem to contradict each other, but as a matter of fact, I meet a lot of people who are not living, I could even say that I was one of them at one point.
But with so many people not living, I have so seldom met someone who could handle the idea of dying.
When speaking of death, I would be met with discomfort and in some extreme cases: disgust. Death is such a taboo topic, that most people will take great lengths to never talk or think about death.
But I would argue the alternative, that we should acknowledge death, and live as if we were dying, because we literally are.
Entropy
Back in college I read “A Brief History of Time” by Stephen Hawking. It was a fascinating book that generally condensed Physics 101 into a couple hundred pages. It was this book that introduced me to the fundamental forces and the laws of the universe, and one concept that really stuck to me was Entropy.
One definition of entropy is that in all systems, order will eventually break down into chaos. In biochemistry, this is called apoptosis, or cell death. It’s a process that cannot be stopped when started, and it’s a process all things go through. The fact that civilizations come and go is testament to this fact, and the universe will end somewhere in the distant future.
Many people have gone through so much to avoid death, cults and religions are built on the promise of eternal life, and some sacrifice so much to delay death only to eventually succumb to the last sleep.
Nothing lives forever.
Not people, not memories, not ideas, nothing.
What’s the Point?
I’m starting out so pessimistically in this post, but people since the beginning of time has pondered on that question. “What is the meaning of life?”.
I don’t claim to have the answer to that question, but I do have some suggestions based on Stoic Wisdom.
Imagine you are a character in an arcade game, the player inserted one coin which gives you an arbitrary number of “lives”. The player only has one coin, so have chances represented by these “lives” and so you go through the challenges, some attempts end in failure, but as you “respawn” you try again and maybe this time you succeed, so you move on to the next challenge. Sometimes you do well enough to earn more “lives”, more chances to keep trying, sometimes you only have a couple of “lives” left and you either have to take big risks or be more conservative until you can do more. You do this until you find yourself at the end, or sometimes because of bad luck you run out of “lives”.
Consider the coin your life, it’s insertion into the arcade machine your birth, and the arbitrary “lives” your chances to do something with that life. Each day we wake up, with new opportunities to do something, new challenges to overcome, and sometimes we fail, but for some reason a new day keeps coming. We still have “lives” so to speak, so as long as we have them we can still try.
Much like the game character in the arcade, the only real point is to keep moving forward until we reach whatever end awaits or until we can’t keep moving forward.
I like to believe life is simply that, a new chance to do something. If that something is good or bad or neither, eventually falls down to me.
“Lives” not Lived
So I started by saying some people are alive, but not living. Because in the metaphor that I just presented, some people don’t really move forward.
As if in the game, they just stay in the same level doing the same thing, never progressing. When the challenge is to much, they would rather stay in the same place instead of trying, afraid of losing “lives” or chances.
But Arcade games have timers, to incentivize players to keep moving forward, never staying in the same space, because without any active progress they fail, a “life” is lost, and they start over.
In real life the timer is the moment between being awake and asleep, people go through the grind of working bad jobs or enduring terrible relationships, but nothing is done, and they wake up the next day to the same thing, no changes except they have less chances to strive for something better.
This is what I mean by being “alive” but not living. People go through life, spending their chances without moving forward, without changing their circumstances, and a new day goes by and they go through the same grind once again.
How to live a “life”
So if everything will come to an end eventually, and we have only one life to live, and an arbitrary number of chances to live, what can we do?
The stoics and most philosophers describe Eudeamonia, the good spirit, but is meant as the “Fulfilled Life”. And we are all supposed to strive for this. So if I were to give my suggestion for the meaning of life, it would be living a life that is fulfilled.
Fulfillment as the stoics believe, falls down to becoming your best self. This includes having your needs met, and desires managed, to want for nothing and be prepared to face death knowing you gave your best shot.
Some people are struggling to gain fulfillment. They are stuck in debt, anxious of the future, unsatisfied with the state of their lives, or so directionless that they have no idea of how a better life could be accomplished.
I see them almost everyday complaining of the physical and mental pains, the responsibilities, the consequences of their bad choices, and the feeling of hopelessness that the desire to even try for something better is beyond them.
But as long as you have “lives”, as long as you are awake the next morning, you have another chance to try and cure what pains you, to manage your workload, to undo your mistakes and see that you can still be happy.
As a Filipino nurse, I was like most people, placed into this profession out of necessity. It’s where the money is, we say back home. But as I’ve learned, chasing the money only makes you miserable, and like so many of my colleagues, doing a job you don’t like is a shortcut to becoming jaded and depressed. I hear so many colleagues who spent years in the profession, cursing their job and their patients, and as I understand her frustration, I fear that I may become her someday so I promised myself, there is no amount of money that would make me do a job I don’t like doing. Because I have been through so many overtimes padded with bonuses that I could double my salary in a week. But I had no time for myself or my spouse, no energy to spend the money I earned, and completely frustrated that I could die doing something I don’t love…
A warning
Make the most of your “lives”, of the chances you get to live a better life. If you find yourself unfulfilled, then are you truly living? If not, remember that you will die someday, how will you look back at your life during your final moments? Will it be of regret or satisfaction?
But I mentioned that the number of lives we have are arbitrary. That is because another reality of life is the fact that we truly have no idea how many chances we get in life. Could we still be awake tomorrow? Could we avoid all accidents that could keep us from achieving our goals? The future is always unknown, so take stock of what you have and what you can do. Because of the uncertainty of the future, you have more reasons to try, because it is a blank slate, take control of what you can and accept what you cannot.
The only true mistake you can do is not wasting your chances by not trying.
Aga Aquino 
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