Four Ways To Find The Will To Live When You've Lost It
There comes a point in young adulthood when one comes to the humbling realisation that life is actually pretty terrible. From playing with dirt to being treated like it, from collecting pennies to earning them, from going to university to get screwed to getting screwed over by your degree, life definitely puts you through the wringer as a young person. It is easy, if not inevitable, to feel disheartened and begin to wonder what is the point of it all. I mean damn, you tried to move out and now you have no choice but to move back in. #millennial/generationZproblems But when you feel like you’re losing or have lost the will to keep going, here are four ways to find it again; because you’re a strong independent adult and you can decide what you want to eat on your own!
1. Don't play hide and seek
“Do you remember where you put it?” “Where’s the last place you saw it?” Gurl, please; if I knew that, do you really think I would be depressed? Your will to live can be as easily misplaced as your phone or purse, and like your material goods, you’ll be most likely to find it when you are least looking. That means NOT counting your blessings like an inspirational quote. You see, the problem with trying to justify life by focusing on the good is that it can make you feel like a bad person for being unhappy; like sadness is an unreasonable emotion in the face of all the good in your life. But it is okay to be disappointed with life and grateful for it at the same time. If anything, it is human. So by all means, try to find your lust for life again but do so by taking it as it comes. It is only when you are well and truly lost in the good AND the bad that life will remind you why it is worth carrying on.
2. In others, we trust
When you’re feeling down, the last thing you want is to be around other people; and yet, it is the best thing for you. If only because it will remind you of who you truly are in spite of your struggles. For example, when a friend of mine spends time with other people, it reminds her that she isn’t very fond of human company and that’s why she spends all her time alone. It’s me. I’m the friend. For others, it could be that you like talking (arguing*) about current affairs, you enjoy making people laugh, or you love knowing the latest tea. It is all too easy to forget about yourself when you are trying to remember to keep going. But the fact is, the world you have come to inhabit in your mind is far less daunting than the one you share with your loved ones, so join them. It is okay to lose your way but never be okay with losing yourself.
3. Embrace your feelings, but don’t accept them
Life is like a takeaway. On the whole, it is a pleasant experience, but it has its flaws. I mean, are you getting value for money? Probably not. Is it as good as people say it is? Again, probably not. But you learn to love it. Sometimes, however, you have a meal so bad that it tastes like blasphemy to the temple that is your body. It is traumatising, to say the least, and it deters you from ordering out again. But you eat it nonetheless because you are hungry and you spent your *hard* earn cash on it. The question is; Do you order from that place again? You’re damn right you do; because while you embraced the bad food (out of poverty, not choice), you refused to accept that your beloved takeaway could do you like that. You know it can be and is better. Well, life is the same. Roll with the punches but don’t accept the way you feel. Don’t accept this version of your life. Life can be better - you know it can.
4. Be bold, be risky
It’s only once you graduate from university that you realise dreams and ambitions are a luxury of the upper-class. The rest of us have to take any job we can get in order to pay off the debt of a degree we will never end up using and to save enough money to get on the property ladder by the time we are middle aged. By which point, we will need to start thinking about having a family, which means getting a higher paying job - that again, is irrelevant to our degree - and before we know it, we’re old and life is entirely mediocre. We get so caught up in surviving that we lose sight of the real reason we are alive - to live. So take a risk, fall on your face, and make mistakes; because it’ll be far less painful than the regrets you may have later. If you’re sick and tired of life, it is because you’re doing something wrong, and more often than not, that something wrong is leaving your dreams behind.
Article written by Lauren Dorling. Keep up with Lauren here
You may also like...
Mental Health Awareness Week is an example of how far society has come in terms of de-stigmatising mental health issues. It is now time for government to be as proactive as the people they represent.