Live as if you were to die tomorrow.
Learn as if you were to live forever.
– Mahatma Gandhi
The above quote by Gandhi, who was born this day in 1869, summarizes my perspective on living and learning pretty much perfectly. Two very short sentences with very big meaning.
Learning? I have that down pretty well. I love to take classes and I try to push myself to read books that teach me about new cultures, places and time periods.
Living like you might die tomorrow is harder though.
When Wonder Boy and I first started dating, he lived by the mantra, “You can sleep when you’re dead.” We’ve long since given that up because I really like sleep. He’s a pretty big fan, too. But the spirit of that, sleeping when you’re dead, is that we shouldn’t make all of our decisions based on a work week. That sometimes having fun means staying out late. Or waking up early.
I don’t think what Wonder Boy was saying is too different from “Live as if you were to die tomorrow.”
Implementing that philosophy in life is difficult because, realistically, sometimes my favorite part of the day is curling up on the couch next to Wonder Boy with dinner in lap and watching The Wire, or whatever our current favorite television series is. If I knew I was going to die the next day, would I do that? Probably not. But it makes me happy so I think its worth doing.
Finding that balance is hard. Seizing life. Enjoying life. Being happy. Sometimes those things are contradictory.
But as a goal towards which to strive, this is pretty good. “Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.”
