“Live every day like it’s your last day” is terrible advice
I use to think this was inspiring advice. It felt freeing. Like everything in life was going to be ok. That I could do whatever I want when I want and nothing will matter. Then I learnt that this is a load of bullshit and some of the worst advice ever made up.
If someone says this to you, they don’t know what they are talking about. They’re just rehashing something they heard from someone because they don’t have anything useful to say to you.
Imagine you had only one day to live, right now! You got a call from your doctor.
Dr: Hey bud, so tomorrow’s your last day. Go all out! Btw my secretary will send the invoice for this call.
Me/You: Son of a B…
Now when the clock strikes midnight you have twenty-four hours left. You can do whatever you want. The trouble is where you start. Twenty-four hours is a very limited time. You have to see your family, climb Mount Everest, make a plane do a backflip, go into space, hack into a bank and steal all their money. I can go on with these ridiculous examples.
Living every day like it’s your last is way too much pressure to put on a person. It would be so overwhelming thinking about what to do and the result is not doing anything at all. Then oops, times up. It’s the wrong way to go about living day to day.
Dr Theodore I, Rubin sums it up perfectly in his book Compassion and Self-Hate: An Alternative to Despair.
“There is only now. The past is gone and the future is not yet here. I refuse to live this day as if it were my last day or only day of my life. This outlook is too pressuring and frantic. It has an aura of self-hate and I suspect is motivated by the need for self-hating, inappropriate and exorbitant accomplishment. I prefer to see this day as my first day. The first day is full of wonders and interests and this approach makes me the master of my time rather than the reverse, in which I become the slave of time.”
This is my favourite section of the book and the part that hit me the most. Reading this was a ‘Holy shit!’ moment for me. A simple shift in our thinking can produce the greatest outcome.
This is a much better way to live day to day. Rather than the pressure of cramming everything and getting as much done as possible like it’s a race, you begin each day as completely anew, with a sense of wonder and curiosity allowing you to do how you please with your time. Rather than ticking off tasks with a deadline like a university paper to submit. There is no peace or happiness in that way of living. Only stress, anxiety and constant chasing for the next thing, until you die.
And you know you don’t have to do everything. That to me is a sense of peace.
Until next time,
Brody
