A Letter from Chris Suarez
A LIFE WORTH LIVING
The phrase is usually accompanied by a picture of feet in the sand, a beautiful couple on a boat, a guy in a luxury car, someone sitting in a penthouse with a city view, or a group of friends with drinks on vacation.
Before we know it a life worth living is dependent on what we have, who we know, and where we get to go. It’s dependent on our social status, our spending habits, or a life of ease.
But that isn’t real life. Life is hard. Life is challenging. Life is unexpected. And with a skewed definition of “worth”, too often we begin to devalue life.
Maybe we devalue our own. We stop investing in ourselves. We stop building confidence. We stop caring about our future. We get discouraged and that leads to depression.
Or maybe we even devalue someone else’s. We treat people poorly. We disregard others' feelings. We minimize their opinions.
A “life worth living” need not be defined or explained or photographed. The definition is in the phrase itself, because life itself is worth living. Every life is worth living.
Difficult lives are worth living - as they teach us to build strength and character and fortitude and overcome challenges. Living through the bad days is worth it. It’s worth it for us and worth it for everyone that loves us.
Be mindful not to allow staged photos and social media to become your measuring stick you stand next to. Your imperfect, messy, stressful, at times downright disastrous life is a life worth living.
We all need to know that when we are in the middle of the work challenges, the money challenges, the relationship challenges, and all of our emotional challenges, that is a “life worth living” too. At times we may stop in the messiness and ask ourselves the question, “Is it worth it? Is this really worth it?” The answer is always yes. Our choices led us there. Good choices, bad choices, indifferent choices. They all combined to bring us to where we are today - to our life worth living.
Yes, the vacations and the beautiful clothes and the incredible meals and the perfect sunsets create moments worth living. But so do all the work days, and sweatshirts, vegetables, and rain clouds.
Commit to looking at every day of this year as a day worth living.
Chris
