At The End, I Hope You Can Say You Truly Lived

Love with all your heart and get your heart broken to pieces. Go solo traveling and get so damn lost alone. Do that presentation, even if it makes you nervous as hell. Accept that job even if you think you are not ready for it yet.

Put yourself out there and have deep, intimate conversations with people, even if it means hearing stories that will kill you on the inside. Go out and do come up with crazy ideas with your friends, even though they might sound stupid later. Apply for that job and get rejected. Open that startup and fail—fail hard.

Do that career shift even if they tell you it’s too late to do so. Go ahead and apply for the job, even if they tell you that you’re underqualified for it. Study that major, even if others tell you it’s just not for you. Pursue your dream, even if everyone else sees it as a crazy one.

Sing your heart out on that karaoke night, even if you realize later that your voice wasn’t that great. Dance like no one’s watching, even if you will look so silly doing it. Buy those red boots, even if everyone tells you not to.

Because at the end, we will regret all the things that we haven’t done. We will realize that doing all this and going through all this rejection, pain, and embarrassment has been worth it, because at least we have driven into life at full speed and at the end we get to say we truly lived. And we will have so many stories to tell and so much advice to give, rather than feeling like we have done nothing. Instead of hanging onto our comfort zones, we can say we truly lived our lives.