Are You Living Well?

I don’t think I often ask myself this question for some years : Are You Living Well? If you are busy or used to doing repetitive things in your life, you will forget to measure your life. My life has got busier and busier since my military service in Korea. I studied hard to get a job, and then got busier after getting the job. My life has seemed to get complicated more and more as I get old. It’s true. You will have more things to do when you try to leave from the cozy arms of your parents, and have other things more to do when you try to make your own family. You didn’t notice at once that you’ve got raised by many hands. Even I’m currently getting many helps from others. This recognition tends to make me too insane to measure my life, because I need to make it in my life to pay the helps back.

While being busy doing my study and my research, I suddenly asked me : are you living well? I couldn’t answer this question easily. I needed a standard of checking whether I’m living well or not. However there are many standards in a life, and it can be hard to measure my life relative to other standards. So, I just found one standard that motivates me. The standard is : Are you enjoying what you are doing?

I should be more honest to measure my life with the standard, because I think I must recognize the standard while being busy. I mean that you have to try to measure your life persistently, not at once for some years. The reason is that I often torture myself to make it in my life and rationalize the self-torture. You will lose your health or your precious things even though you think you liked the years you spent and don’t regret the times.

​ So If you think you are enjoying what you are doing, I think you can answer “I’m living well now”. This answer will also lead to the answer for “Are you living well for years?” You have to measure your life consciously with the standard every moment. There needs no comparison with others. You can just focus on yourself. Therefore, write what you do in your life, and then find the points you like in your life. I can write now:

• Writing this kind of post with a relaxing music (such as Ryuichi Sakamoto’s songs)
• Solving hard problems on my research and making it work.
• Walking to the school to study.
• talking with my loved ones.
• Exercising
• Cooking
• Reading Schopenhauer’s books

When you do the above ones, try to recognize that you enjoy doing them. Then, You will live well.