Life is all about itself
“The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.” — Alan Watts
The title of this article has been sitting on the blank page in front of me for a few days. I was wondering how to start because I really love how it sounds: Life is all about itself. This could easily be a guidebook on how to live, but unfortunately, in our world, people are always looking for something more.
While I was wondering how to begin, I saw yet another video. In it, yet another super-duper influencer was showing me how to achieve a perfect body during menopause – swinging some dumbbells over her head in perfect gear, with a perfect smile, and then swallowing a handful of powders and pills for perfect health.
That’s it! Just another recipe for a happy life.
And she isn’t the only one. We are flooded with perfect profiles of perfect people telling us HOW WE MUST live to be healthy, happy, successful, and so on. And in pursuit of some imaginary vision of ourselves, we forget what it truly means to live. We follow other people’s fabrications of a life that has nothing to do with the things that would actually make us happy. We’ve forgotten them somewhere along the way—we’ve dropped them in the race for a “happy life.”
This isn’t hate. It is astonishment.
I pointed out this video because menopause is an important topic for me right now. I follow what is happening online and what shared experiences we, women of my age, have. Everywhere I look, I see everyone searching for a magic pill for happiness. No one seems to realize that menopause, just like life itself, is a process. Everyone is in a rush, and it’s easiest to just follow what someone else tells you, and nobody asks—but why exactly this way? Why will this work for me?
What if I just take a slow walk in the forest or climb a hill, even if it’s just 300 meters? What if I sit at the top and just breathe for 10 minutes?
What if I plant flowers in my garden or in a pot on the balcony, and then sit down to drink my coffee next to them?
What if I just do a basic, slow stretch in my bed when I wake up?
Will I be less happy and successful then? And in whose eyes?
What is this obsession with happiness and a good life? How do these things intertwine, and why is it that in search of that very happiness, we end up the least happy?
We forget that the meaning of life is simply to live. Life is an end in itself. It is not a project to be completed successfully, nor is it a business plan that needs optimization.
How did it happen that it became easier to choose to be a perfect product on the market than to listen to yourself – to what your body is telling you, what its needs are? It knows, and it knows very well what kind of life it wants to live. After all, it has been with you from the very beginning.
Life doesn’t owe us perfection, nor do we owe it to life. It just happens – with the wrinkles, with the fatigue, with the changes, but also with the quiet joy of morning coffee, with the smile of the people around you, with a walk in the rain…
I think that when it happens that, for some reason, we step off the merry-go-round we call life and stop, look around, and see what life actually is, when we strip away the expectations – towards ourselves, towards others, towards life itself… then, finally, stillness sets in.
Then you realize that you don’t need to run to reach yourself. That there is no need to compare yourself, that not being perfect is wonderful and absolutely beautiful. That there is nothing to fix.
That your body, changing and tired from all the rushing, is not a broken mechanism that needs magic pills and regimes to meet some fabricated standards. It is your home.
When you take off the backpack of expectations, reality stops being a burden and becomes… just reality. The soil in the garden is just warm and smells of moisture. The path through the forest is just a path under your feet, not a cardio workout. The 300-meter peak is just a place to enjoy the view.
And exactly then, the title on the blank page stops being just a beautiful phrase in English. It turns into a feeling.
Life is all about itself. It is not in what will happen tomorrow or the day after, nor is it in the perfect version of you that someone is selling you. Life is exactly what is left when you stop demanding from it.
P.S. When you imagine your ideal, peaceful day – the one where life is “just about itself” – what is in it?
