| Living and Existing |

“Truly live. Don’t simply exist.”

Those were words from a recent blog post by a friend of ours, Jeremy Stanley. He’s an awesome photographer and quite the world traveler. Those words stuck with me as I read his blog post, because I think many of us seek to simply exist. It’s sad, but our society is so stuck on being successful and climbing the corporate ladder. People that try to be different end up being the same as well, because we all like to follow the trends. I’m not trying to call anyone out, it’s just a part of our society that saddens me.

Yesterday, I decided to take a Zumba class on a whim. I always love the class but didn’t plan to take it at the Y when Jeremy and I showed up yesterday. Within the first five minutes, my thoughts were “This is not hard enough of a workout, I feel like a slacker, and wow, I look like a fool.” Seriously? I have the luxury to take cool, fun classes and I complain that I’m not killing my body during a workout. And yes, I did look like an ABSOLUTE fool. But, I smiled the entire time, because I was actually having fun and going out of the way of my normal routine.

These are the things we talk about doing. We talk about “Live life to the fullest,” “Take Chances and Risks,” “Don’t take life too seriously.” But, do any of us really take our own advice? I know I don’t most of the time. So, my weird plan is to start appraoching life like I did with Zumba.  I might look like a total fool, but at least I’ll be smiling and really living.

Isn’t that what it’s really about anyways?