Falling in love with your life is a lot like dating. Not every date works out—some are duds and others oh-so-hopeful but you’re left out to dry. Even so, in order to find someone to be with you have to throw yourself back in the dating game.
Yeah–falling in love with your life is a lot like that. Not every interest leads you to a career, or every paycheck to satisfaction, or every new experience to something you want to keep on doing, but in the end, falling in love with your life looks a lot different than you ever thought it would.
One way to ensure you never fall in love with your life is by repeating habits that are boring to you. My high school football coach always reminded, “If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten.” So if you’re life is boring, fruitless, mediocre, or confusing, it’s time to stop doing the same routine again and again and start trying some new things.
Not long ago I sat across a round table from a college sophomore who was answering a question I had asked the group: What makes your heart ache the most? Her answer was simple—and as tears built around her pensive eyes she released how she didn’t know what she was supposed to do with her life. She didn’t know her purpose, her plan, if her major was right, or what God was calling her to do. And it tortured her soul.
I think a lot of us are tortured by those same thoughts, caught in a place of fear, of immobility, only because we’re not sure what to do to find an answer to a question that seems like it takes a lifetime to answer.
Photo Credit: Stefano Domenici (Creative Commons)
There’s a difference between existing and living.
Someone who is existing doesn’t think much about what they’re doing, they just do it. They robotically do their job, their relationships, their faith, their everything. It’s a practiced production that holds very little meaning and often goes unchanged.
But someone who is living, is thriving. Every movement, word, and breath matters and stirs the soul to life because it’s for a purpose. And that purpose is directly plugged into having fallen in love with life. So how do you fall in love with your life?
Just go do stuff.
As an English teacher I deny my students ever using such a vague description like “stuff”, but for falling in love with your life, it’s perfect. Go do stuff. Don’t sit and wait for life to come to you, don’t expect your life to magically become awesome, don’t ever think purpose and passion suddenly writes itself on the wall for you if all you’re ever doing is waiting.
Falling in love with your life is all about doing stuff—new stuff, weird stuff, challenging stuff, uncomfortable stuff, people stuff, nature stuff, dreamy stuff, risky stuff…
And remember, not every attempt at doing stuff is going to result in instant passion and purpose—it’s going to take some dating. But here’s when you know you have found “it”, when you have fallen in love with your life: you come alive.
Your entire being screams in excitement, you want to do it over and over again, it gives you stories to tell and people to talk to, you feel it changing you, growing you, it brings a radiant beam into your smile, and when you’re doing “it” you feel as if you’re finally doing what God created you to do.
Once you find what makes you come alive, keep doing that stuff until it kills you. Too many lives have been wasted doing nothing. Too many people have died with a list of regrets. Too many geniuses have never been discovered, authors never published, art never created, adventures never romped, and people who never thrived because they chose to exist rather than to live.
You can fall in love with your life if you stop existing in the life that you are living.
Get out there. Go do some awesome stuff and fall in love with living your life.
