"You Only Live Once"

An oft-repeated mantra in our current society is, “you only live once.”  This saying, of course is not by any standard “new” or “ground-breaking.”  For millenniums, human beings have acknowledged our mortality, self-proven by the certainty of our own deaths.  The pattern of our lives is consistent: our parents conceive us, we develop in our mother’s womb, we are born, we mature, we age, and we die.  The asyndetonic nature of our existence is exacerbated by the fact that we only get one try at each stage of our life.  Everything we decide and consequently act on is immediately finalized, becoming a piece of our own personal concrete history.  We are unable, as humans, to go back and fix any mistakes, or better any wrongs.  Rather, we are subjects to our own decisions, and forced to follow the paths we create by our actions. 

Sadly, the ethics associated with “only living once” have become both warped and perverted.  Warped because in theory, anytime something can only be done once, we would hope that it is executed correctly.  For instance, marriage should be a once in a lifetime event, and it is not uncommon to hear a bride exclaiming that she wants the wedding to be absolutely perfect.  What she means by perfect is that by strategic planning and conscientious decision-making, the outcome is without flaw.  The wedding is seamlessly weaved into the perfect day.  When a team has only one chance to face an opposing rival, the coach will often be heard saying, “Give it everything you’ve got.”  Everything in this case means to exert full effort, emotionally and athletically playing at an unsurpassed level.  Unfortunately, “you only live once” has evolved into ethically warped behaviors that do not promote perfection and hard work, but instead idealizes complete chaos and immaturity.  “Only living once” has become an excuse for wild behavior and fruitless activity.  The participation in drinking alcohol, drug-use, pre-marital sex, and general tom-foolery are excused by the idea that we only live once, and consequently should have as many possible experiences, good or bad, to in some way fulfill our human destiny.  This idea is perverse because the twisted nature of this social concept is ultimately destructive, yet nevertheless embodies the rules of warped ethics.  Logically speaking, there is nothing ethical in bad behavior.  It is an insult to ethics, the moral principles that influence our decisions, to call any kind of malevolent behavior imperative to our short existence. 

If you truly “only live once,” then, like a wedding, or a high-stakes athletic game, you should be conscientious in planning, positive in decision making, and ultimately effective in execution.  We should want our one chance at life to result in a masterpiece painting, laden with creative brush-strokes and significant purpose.  Instead, we marginalize our existence and choose to finger-paint rudimentary pictures of drunken nights, drug-induced highs, meaningless sensuality, and selfish antics, resulting in a hideous portrait of an un-realized self.  When ethics are perverted, life becomes a twisted mess of chaos, and when we take bad advice by supposedly knowledgeable individuals promoting the incredulous ideology of self-gratification, it is our lack of discernment that must be blamed.

Advice:

Live life completely aware that “you only live once.”  However, do not warp the ethical response to said mantra by trying to indulge in destructive behavior.  Instead, embrace conscientious living, careful of what you say, deliberate in what you do, grounding every decision in foundational wisdom.  Like our wedding day, our life should be without flaw, upstanding before God and man. Living only once should inspire desperation to get it right the first time, because we are not given the luxury of second chances.