The gift of life

December 13, 2009 · Posted in Various

I know I haven’t written anything for a while but I couldn’t help it since I am as busy as hell, submitting my MSc’s applications. I really hope everything will go fine and study in UK next year, preferably in London:).

Disclaimer: Today I am not gonna discuss anything Open Source related, so you may stop reading if you were looking for a cool Qt4 or Gentoo related topic. This post might make you feel miserable or something. You‘ve been warned :)

I will have a conversation about the gift of life, with you and my self. During the last few months, unfortunate events are taking place in my life. Sudden illnesses or long-term illnesses that simply getting worse day by day are occupying my everyday thoughts.

“Seize the day”. In other words, do not let any single day get wasted. None of us can be sure about the future. We all wish to be happy and healthy but unfortunately life is not fair. Sometimes, I consider life as a game. A game with unfair and hearse rules, strict judgment, and of course as in every game, there are winners and losers. The worst thing is that in most cases, you can’t do anything to prevent bad things from happening. You are simply a watcher, waiting for some kind of miracle or a fairy to fix things automatically. Yeah, I know that sometimes that works. But those times are fairly rare.

“Making dreams”. This topic is by far the most popular among my discussions with my friends. Should we make dreams or let the life make her own choices? Wait, I know that many of you believe that people are supposed to make future plans and dreams otherwise we are turning into machines. Like when you plan the vacations months ago. You can’t stop thinking of them no matter what. And this is definitely a motivation, a reason to work harder, feel stronger, get over bad times, because something good is about to happen.

But what if an unfortunate life event changes your plans? Not necessarily a bad thing, but something that forces you to rethink about the future twice. Fulfilled dreams make you feel awesome, but what about those dreams that you were forced to let them go? Many people feel quite disappointed when they are not able to make their dreams true. The worst part is, when this decision wasn’t their choice, but somebody else’s. Reports show that people recovering from such disappointment, are afraid to make future plans for quite a long time. They are defending their feelings and protecting themselves from another disappointment. And this sounds reasonable to me. But again, not all dreams are doable. You should keep making dreams even though you are sure that they are not even close to reality. I’ve said before that life is a game with unfair rules. Unfair is not always similar to ‘bad’;-)

Let’s get back to the “gift of life” part. You should be thankful for every breath you take. You won’t understand this feeling until you have a near death experience (car accident or stuff) or, even worse, fighting with a dangerous illness such as HIV, cancer and so many more of those. It is true, that most people think that bad things can’t happen to them, that they invulnerable. Of course this statement is by far unreasonable.

As you may have noticed, this post is quite confusing. It is more a random series of thoughts about life and people attitude on it. My whole point is to ask you (and remind myself) to respect your life, don’t take anything for sure, make dreams and don’t give up when you fail to make them true. Keep making dreams in good and bad times, because this is what matters. This is what makes you stronger and gives you enough energy to stand up and deal with life face to face. If you stop making dreams, you’ve lost the game. You are “dead” even though you are as healthy as a small child.

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Comments

4 Responses to “The gift of life”

Vasilis on December 13th, 2009 3:14 pm

First of all, I would like to wish you good luck with your MSc’s applications! I’m sure you will be accepted and when this is done, just make sure to have a great time.

Regarding the “gift of life”. Of course you are right and I’m sure everyone has thought of this sometime in their lives. I can’t agree with you more regarding the “I’m invulnerable” part. When people are healthy, they tend to neglect their good health (and life in general) and only when the time comes that they will be either physically or mentally (or even both) ill, then it will be the time they will understand about the gift of life, about what they had and did not appreciate.

But I can’t help thinking that something bad must have happened in your life because of this “irregular” post. I really hope it wasn’t something like loosing a close relative or having an accident. I hope everything is ok.
walrus on December 13th, 2009 6:27 pm

Mate I really hope that nothing bad happened you this post scared me a bit.
As far as seizing opportunities and dreaming about the future is concerned I believe that one should always seize opportunities but not at random. Sometimes you have the opportunity to do things that you realize you will regret sooner or later (even though you enjoy them now). Planning for the future and dreaming are different things for me. Planning ahead and getting disappointed is something that one must always have on his mind. Plans are made to be abandoned :-). Dreaming on the other hand is necessary. One of my greatest fears is that I will accomplish everything I ever dreamed of. That I won’t have anything to dream about! When you make a dream come true, it is awesome but it stops being a dream as well… And reality some times is not as satisfactory as a dream.
A poet once wrote that his greatest dream was to go to Paris. He never went because he knew that Paris in reality is not the same as the city he dreams of. So he did not wanted to be disappointed.
tsakf on December 13th, 2009 6:51 pm

We all make dreams, as long as we’re trying, the dreams are interesting. When the goal is accomplished. we enjoy, but after a while, the joy slips away. We have to make a new dream, to keep things, going. At 47 years of life, I’ve realised that, the important is the moment, and the plans and dreaming, must only occupy 10% of our time and effort. Although when making choices for the moment, we must be careful, not to choose something that drives us away from our dream.

Sieze the day!

Good luck with your MSc’s applications!
Markos on December 13th, 2009 8:10 pm

@Vasilis & Walrus

No, everything is fine with me. I didn’t mean to scare you at all. I just decided to share with you a summary from a discussion I had with a friend recently. That would be all :)

Even when you have achieved everything, you will always dream of something new.

As walrus successfully noted, “And reality some times is not as satisfactory as a dream”, it is really hard to accomplish a dream exactly as you wished. In that case, there are two possible feelings. 1) Regret for accomplishing your dream in this way. 2) Be thankful for accomplishing a part of it. Which one is preferable? I really don’t know :)

@tsakf

“the important is the moment”. That is so fucking true :) Unfortunately, I find it difficult to limit the dreams to just 10% of time and effort. Our mind is functioning 24/7. Once you get in the loop of a dream, it is quite hard to stop it. It pops up every now and then. The only way to limit dreams in that percent is when you actually don’t have time to make them. In that case, really would have taken over your mind and thoughts which I *really* hope it wont happen.