To you, what does having a life mean?

Living as full & rich a life as possible, reaching your full potential & most of all, enjoying the ride.
Otherwise you’re simply existing, which is fine, in an apocalyptic landscape, but no other.

To me living is about the conflict of hope against experience. That’s why childhood is (or should be) magical, because everything seems possible. At this stage in my life, I have the great fortune of looking back on my past and grinning most of the time at the thought of it. I find it particularly funny that for so long I could be such an enormous fool and get away with it. A lifetime of subjection to the grim prophecy that lack of ambition was tantamount to a meaningless existence turned out to be a pile of crap. “Enjoy yourself. It’s later than you think.”

My opinion on “having a life” is having the opportunity to do things for yourself, for pleasure, fun or self-development. Employment doesn’t usually count unless you’re doing your “dream job”. It’s more what you do with those hours between working and sleeping. It doesn’t matter if you’re not working towards a particular goal; I haven’t had more than one ambition in my life and I’ve already achieved it. Everything else is play.

It means being physically and mentally balanced, being independent in the true sense of the word and doing whatever brings fulfillment. It also means living and letting live.

If you look forward to things, whatever they may be, then you ‘have a life’.

TO me it means having friends, events, ie stuff going on. Interests outside the home.

You know everyone has wonderful dreams and aspirations when we’re emerging adults; the world is our compass. I don’t know anyone who has accomplished all they wanted to and the important thing is to feel good about something. You don’t have to be a scientist discovering new and exciting concepts; instead you can be that cool guy that speaks to a lonely kid on a daily basis, or the cool person who volunteers at Big Brother/Big Sister org. Just saying hello and asking after his or her welfare will brighten an elderly person’s day. Remember it’s not what you’ve accomplished, it’s who you’ve made smile or feel happy for 1 second. Instead of seeing the world in shortfalls and unrealized dreams, look at it as a million opportunities to affect someone’s life; if only for a little while.

a quote I share on my profile:

” You know what, it’s not your life. It’s life. Life is bigger than you. If you can imagine that. Life isn’t something that you possess; it’s something that you take part in, and you witness.” Louis C.K

Living each minute as if it were the last, because we never know how many of those minutes we have left to live.

Being alive. We can’t all reach our human potential to serve the market better….Life isn’t about making money and being successful.

All lovely answers. Thanks jellies-! :)

Dreams, aspirations, goals are all made up stuff. Things that we want to achieve for ourselves and our loved ones. The idea of fulfilling your dream is incredible. On the contrary, if it’s not the way we want, we think that our life is diminishing and we can’t be more helpless.
We need to understand that life is not about meeting deadlines, achieving dreams and rushing with time to reach the goal. Well that’s a part of life more so the purpose of life. And it’s very important. But we should know that there’s a big difference between living a life and merely breathing. We need to maintain the difference.

Pretty much being who I really am. The me I’m supposed to be. Having the right to like what I like.