What Kind of Life Do You Really Want to Live?

Somewhere along the way, we have to stop and questioned ourselves, are we living our lives the way we wanted or the way it should be?

Yesterday, while having a discussion about quality life with my students, one of my students ask ‘Sir, how can we know that we are living a quality life?’ Another student answered, ‘it’s simple when we get rich and can be able to buy everything we want, it means we are living a quality life’. The discussion becomes interesting when another student asks, ‘Sir, it means being rich and having lots of money can lead us to live a quality life’. This discussion makes me wonder when a 12 and 13-year-old are anxious about their living, then do we realise what kind of life we should live? Do our life goals are simply to earn money and live a convenient life? Or it should be something that gives meaning to our living, even to our death.

On September 2nd, 2018, a girl named Claire Lucia Wineland died from a stroke one week after a lung transplant at the age of 21. Wineland was born with cystic fibrosis, a genetic disorder that affects mostly the lungs, but also the pancreas, liver, kidneys, and intestine making a person difficult to live a normal life. She lived most of her life in hospital on life support. However, she became an activist, author, TEDx Speaker and social media star. In 2017, she appeared on TEDx and talked about the self-worth:

Source: Claire’s Place Foundation, Inc. – Facebook page

Life isn’t just about being happy… It’s about what you’re making of your life and whether you can find great pride in who you are and what you’ve given.”

We sometimes forget and overlooked what we have given. We compare, and we ignored what kind of struggle we surpass, and yet we start doubting our own strengths and abilities. In today’s chaotic world, the only goal that almost every individual has is to earn money as we all need money from fulfilling basic needs necessary for survival to making our wildest dreams come true. But what else makes us happy and gives meaning to our mere existence?

Though we do our best to ignore it, the truth is that our lives could be cut short at any moment, as could those of our loved ones. Start setting some goals for yourselves, take out some time to think about others, what kind of contribution you can make to make someone happy or stress-free? Yes, Sir, I will definitely contribute my share ‘When I become Rich’. Not all dreams and goals have to be set somewhere far off in the distant future for “when I’m rich,” “when I’m CEO” or “when I’ve retired.” To do something good in your life does not require a time frame or a plan. It only requires determination and will.

Claire’s life story teaches us that our happiness is in our hands, the way we designed our life, the goals we set for our future, the way we live. It all depends on how much we care, how passionate we are for our future, how much we value the life that we have given to us.  It doesn’t matter at what stage of our career we are in, how successful we are or how rich we become. As Clair said ‘Death is Inevitable. Living a life, we can be proud of is something we can control.’

Take out some time today and think, what kind of life do you want in the near future. Is it something that you can be proud of? I am sure you will find the answer like my students who questioned yesterday and ended up with an engaging discussion that might help them setting their life goals 😊

Good Luck!

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