What If You Could View Everything Again as Though for the First Time?

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“He stares likewise with protruding eyes and asks in the same way when astonished by the sight of a man, or a blossoming tree, or a refreshing glass of water. Each day Zorba views everything as though for the first time.”

-Nikos Kazantzakis, Zorba the Greek

Some of the best advice I’ve ever received is to live as though it were simultaneously my first day on Earth, my last day on Earth, and as though I was going to live forever.

That’s a lot to keep straight at once, and it makes it difficult to plan your day! But it’s fantastic advice, and here’s why…

Living as though it were your last day is pretty common advice, and it’s not bad as far as it goes. But, if you were really to do this and take it to its logical conclusion, you’d probably ruin your life by about 10:30am!

Yes, you’d probably “live life to the fullest,” but many people would tell off their bosses and ruin their chances of ever getting hired anywhere again; they’d pull all these dangerous stunts and be awfully rude to people they thought they’d never see again.

It would be mayhem!

So it’s a good idea to live as though you’re going to live forever as well, because then you’ll keep in mind that your actions have consequences and that you’ll have to live with them for a very long time.

But what about living as though it were your first day?

Well, how miraculous and just fucking awesome would everything seem if you were seeing your world for the very first time?

Aren’t even the most common parts of our everyday experience simply phenomenal? Think about it…

I mean, you probably have this little box in your pocket that you can use to contact friends and family thousands of miles away and see their faces instantly onscreen; you turn this thing in your kitchen and life-giving water just flows out of your tap until you decide to stop it; you step outside your front door and you’re exposed to wonders the likes of which billions of humans in the past could have only dreamt of!

Life is amazing, but we get numbed to it so easily!