Its duration is one day
There is a vast difference between truly living and merely going through a day pre-scripted for us as life, even if we ourselves designed this life/cage and accepted it for ourselves. The majority of people spend their days oscillating between waking from sleep, doing what they are supposed to do, experiencing fleeting moments with themselves, family, and friends, and then returning to sleep, preparing for a new awakening and starting a new day that is nothing more than an extension of the previous one, an exact replica of it. Strikingly, this pattern of living accompanies us from the very first moment we enter school, continues throughout our years of study, and follows us as we transition into work, marriage, and family formation. We soon grow old in the embrace of a day we have come to know and that has come to know us, until it becomes as accustomed to us as we are to it, without realizing that failing to break the routine and shattering a monotonous, dreary lifestyle means living a long life in a single day.
Some believe that attaining wealth guarantees a happy life, based on its ability to secure life’s necessities and extend into luxury. I have written many times: “Money is far less capable of buying happiness, and no place on earth can sell the richest of the rich ten grams of happiness.” This is the most important lesson life can offer a human being: happiness is not tied to wealth, status, position, or age. Rather, the essence of happiness lies in experiencing a fresh, fleeting, simple, spontaneous moment of joy. Only these few moments remain, in the end, from a long life.
It happens that a person, surrounded by all the comforts of prosperity, lives nevertheless burdened and anxious, stacking day upon day, effort upon exhausting effort, social status upon status, and output upon output, far from any rejuvenating life that stirs the soul and refreshes the blood in its veins. It is a life distant from what has been drawn for us, a life we have lived as if it were a cage, a life whose components we choose from the ledger of our convictions, not from the catalog of habit, the market, and consumption. Our loss is devastating when we become accustomed to living in a day that generates only itself, birthing nothing but a copy of itself.
Waiting for an impending moment of joy or deliverance, even if its arrival is impossible, is a sacred human endeavor. Were it not for this obsession, this hope for what is to come, the lives of millions of human beings would have been destroyed. However, between waiting for what never comes and living the fleeting, non-repeating moment of life, there stretches a thin thread that clearly states: You may wait as much as you wish, and you may choose a different way of living.
There is a vast and significant difference between living as a loyal, obedient servant who fulfills one’s own demands, and creating a life you dream of. This is precisely the vast difference between truly living and merely staying alive.
Taleb Al-Rifaie
