Live A Life Worth Replaying
We should all count our experiences instead of our achievements. I have read and heard it so many times — that when you are lying on your deathbed, counting your breaths, wondering which one will be your last, your life flashes before you. And when that happens, I am certain the achievements don't surface.
Sure, one may think about their convocation ceremony, their wedding, their firstborn, their first great adventure — but all of these are also experiences that brought genuine joy into our lives. All of these moments altered the trajectory of who we became, which is why they carry such weight. That is why we celebrate them — because even in those moments, we sense their finality. We know we will never feel quite this way again.
And so one must choose to hoard experiences in life. Do more things. Fail at those things. Seek out experiences that have the potential to transform you. Chasing materialistic things is fine for a while — those things do make life convenient. But if you do not enrich whatever remains of your life with genuinely transformative experiences, you are not only stuck in the same mental space, you become incapable of evolution.
The purpose of life is to evolve — your intelligence, your consciousness, your relationships with others, and your final contribution to the world. You are supposed to grow wiser as you age. Most of us don't. We have simply lived for decades without understanding why we make the choices we do. Wisdom comes from experiencing life fully — from noticing yourself within those experiences, and remaining conscious of the effect they leave upon you.
So I would urge you to fold more experiences into your life. Experiences with the potential to change who you are. People travel solo not because they want to explore a place, but because they want to explore themselves — to draw closer to who they really are.
Seek adventure. Do more things that make you uncomfortable, things that challenge and reshape your thinking. Death is inevitable — we all know that. Live a life so full that when it arrives, you need not count your last remaining breaths in dread. Instead, you can simply lean back and replay those experiences in your mind one final time, before you lose it all.