I choose to live until death, not spend the time dying until death occurs.
Interpretation
Live actively and purposefully instead of passively waiting for life to end.
This quote reflects the idea that one should embrace life with intention and awareness rather than merely existing and allowing time to pass. Mattie Stepanek encourages a proactive approach to living fully, highlighting the importance of making the most out of each moment, even in the face of mortality.
In practice
During a motivational speech about overcoming adversity.
If it came to a magic genie, I would ask him for two extra wishes. One would be that no one would have to live with the muscular dystrophy disease or any disease. And the second one would be world peace, that we just stop fighting, talk about things, and we could live in harmony once again, like God intended us to do.
I never question God. Sometimes I say, 'Why me? Why do I have such a hard life? Why do I have this disease? Why do I have siblings who died?' But then I think and say, 'Why not me?'
I wanted to write a book that talked about the emotions of children, which is the rainbow. We all have moods. We talk about being blue when we're sad, and being yellow when we're cowards, and when we're mad, we're red.
On, there are so many lives. How we wish we could live them concurrently instead of one by one by one. We could select the best pieces of each, stringing them together like a strand of pearls. But that's not how it works. A human life is a beautiful mess.
Think of life as a voyage. The truest liver of the truest life is like a voyager who, as he sails, is not indifferent to all the beauty of the sea around him.
My father left me with the feeling that I had to live for two people, and that if I did it well enough, somehow I could make up for the life he should have had. And his memory infused me, at a younger age than most, with a sense of my own mortality. The knowledge that I, too, could die young drove me both to try to drain the most out of every moment of life and to get on with the next big challenge. Even when I wasn't sure where I was going, I was always in a hurry.
Nobody plays this life with marked cards, so sometimes we win and sometimes we lose. Do not expect anything in return, do not expect your efforts to be appreciated, your genius to be discovered, your love to be understood.
A life without impact and contribution is a very empty life, so use your life to make the world better.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.