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“Don’t try to add more years to your life. Better add more life to your years.”
Blaise Pascal

With no disrespect to Pascal and his genius, while I agree with the latter part of his above assertion, I don’t agree with the first part. Yes, it is far more important to fill our years with life than it is to fill our life with years, but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try to add years. There are lots of things we can do to promote longevity, and, by all means, let’s do those things; let’s do what we can to live longer. But we must beware of confusing quantity with quality. We mustn’t focus so much on lengthening life that we forget to enjoy life for however long we have it.

After all, joylessness might just be the most innocuously damaging sin we didn’t know we were committing.

A Joyless Life

Did that just break your brain? Mine, too, when I first came across that notion. But hear me out.

First of all, being joyful is a Biblical command: The Apostle Paul, in two separate epistles, commands us to rejoice always (Philippians 4:4; 1 Thessalonians 5:16). Ergo, to not have joy is to be disobedient (i.e., is to sin).

Secondly, as believers, we know the Almighty God who created all things: sunshine, forests, oceans, food, and so much more. So when we experience those things, we ought to do so in a way that honors Him (i.e., with joy), because we know that it is He who gave them to us and who enables us to enjoy them.

Thirdly, God is the Good Father who gave those things to us as gifts to be enjoyed; to not enjoy them would be disrespectful. How would you feel if you poured your heart into giving a friend the perfect gift and they just left it in the box in the corner of their room collecting dust? Not great, right? So how do you think our Father feels when we mindlessly go through life without enjoying the beautiful gifts He’s given us?

So enjoy life with all of its sights, sounds, tastes, and experiences. Not only will you be deepening the quality of your life, but you’ll be honoring the God who gave you that life.

What does this look like? Maybe let’s start with what it doesn’t look like. For me, it happens a lot with eating: I often find myself finishing a tasty meal only to realize that I never truly enjoyed it; I didn’t take the time to truly experience and savor the flavors and textures. This kind of mindlessness is the enemy of joy, because joy requires being mindful of and present in the moment. So next time you’re eating a tasty meal, slow down and be present enough to truly enjoy what you’re eating—the textures, the tastes, the smells. The next time a striking sunset catches your eye, pause and soak it in. The next time you hear a gorgeous song, maybe just close your eyes and finish listening to it without distraction. Such seemingly small practices can actually be quite profound in terms of how they open us up to be able to more deeply experience and enjoy all the fullness and beauty that life has to offer.

The antidote to a joyless life, therefore, is greater mindfulness (check out my earlier post for more on mindfulness). Stress can also be a joy-sucker, so if that’s what’s keeping you from a joyful life, then you might want to check out my stress management book on Amazon.

But sometimes what’s keeping us from joy isn’t stress or mindlessness, but rather the relentless pursuit of more. More money. More power. More influence. Even more of life itself.

A Long Life vs. a Full Life

I was listening to a podcast recently with an interviewee who is an expert in longevity. While he provided a lot of great info on practices and habits that promote longevity, the only thing that has stuck with me about what he said is what seemed like an inordinate focus on a long life at the expense of what might be considered a joyful life. Based on things he said and the way he said them, he gave the impression that his main ambition in life is to have the greatest longevity ever (or at least to have the best values on biomarkers of longevity). As such, his daily habits and practices are all things that are empirically supported to optimize longevity biomarkers. If it doesn’t have evidence behind it for longevity, he doesn’t do it. The result is that he has what sounds like a very rigidly inflexible life: the same meals at the same times every day; the same activity patterns every day; the same sleep schedule every day. No deviation. No flexibility. No variety.

Admittedly, everything I know about this longevity expert is from this podcast, which undoubtedly captures only a small snippet of his life, so I don’t want to make overly strong assumptions about his values or about the quality of his life. Also, it’s very likely that he does indeed derive joy from these activities. He also mentioned how he prioritizes and values time with his family, so that is one area where he certainly seems to get joy. But form my experience, some of the most profound moments of joy are the unplanned ones that catch you by surprise. If your schedule isn’t flexible enough to allow for those moments, you’ll miss them. Moreover, some of the most joyful experiences in my life are ones that wouldn’t be considered “healthy” from a longevity standpoint: indulging in decadent celebratory feasts with family and friends; making deliciously boozy French silk pies for Pi Day; staying out past an ideal bedtime to see musicals and other shows; traveling to other countries and trying new foods. All of those are things that, at least to me, make life worth living, and if my focus were solely on doing only the things that 100% promote perfect health and longevity, I couldn’t have done any of those things. And that would be sad. That would make for a life I wouldn’t want to live.

Now don’t get me wrong: as a wellness professional, I’m all for doing the habits that promote health and longevity. But what’s the point of living a long life if you’re not actually living that life? This becomes even more poignant when we consider that we don’t know how many years we have on this earth, as I was recently reminded of in another podcast (caveat: there is a small amount of swearing).

Sure, we can do things that increase our likelihood of living longer, but there’s nothing we can do that can guarantee a living longer. Not to be unnecessarily morbid, but any of us could die at any moment from an accident, an acute illness, or goodness knows what else. So why focus so exclusively on something that we ultimately can’t control anyway? Our days are numbered, and we don’t know that number. Perhaps we can increase that number, but it’s no guarantee. So, yes, do the heathy habits that promote vitality and longevity, but instead of solely focusing on filling your life with more years, put some of that focus on filling those years with more life. In other words, instead of living for life, start living life. Or to put it even more simply, enjoy life.

A Life Well Lived

I see a similar mentality a lot when it comes to work. Yes, work is important. We are called and created to work. And, more practically, we need the income to support life. So there’s nothing wrong with work itself—quite the opposite, actually. Where it can go wrong is when we prioritize working above living, when we work ourselves to the bone to give our families everything but never give them ourselves, when we spend so much time and effort working to create a better life but never allow ourselves to actually live that life.

Jesus has a term for people like this: fool.

And he told them a parable, saying, “The land of a rich man produced plentifully, and he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’ And he said, ‘I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.”’ But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.”
Luke 12:16–21

There’s nothing we can do to stop or reverse the flow of time, meaning that when a moment has passed, it’s gone…forever. No do overs. No repeats. No second chances. If you missed it, you missed it.

So I urge you to ask yourself the tough questions. In your attempts to increase your lifetime potential of moments (e.g., by increasing longevity, by having more money to travel, etc.), how many moments have you ended up missing? How many more are you willing to miss before you realize that those moments are what make up life—that those moments are life?

So don’t put off until tomorrow what you could do today.

We usually use that precept as a way to discourage procrastination, but what if we used it to encourage living life well? Don’t put off spending time with family. Don’t put off taking that dream trip. Don’t put off letting someone know you love them. Don’t keep putting off life until tomorrow, because some day, you’ll run out of tomorrows.

And what if today were that day? What if today didn’t have a tomorrow? Looking at your life up until now, can you honestly say you’re happy with how you’ve lived it? With how much you’ve truly enjoyed it? Or is it time to start actually living the full, abundant, joy-filled life you were created for?

Yours truly,
D. R. Meriwether, Ph. D
Renaissance Man and Abundant Life Liver