I was a teenager when I first read a quote from Anaïs Nin and realized I was fascinated by the mind of this amazing woman.

I idolized her so much that I actually wanted to change my name to Anaïs. Whatever she wrote I read it with the appetite of a starving child.

She had such deep, timeless thoughts about every important matter that challenged my perception and changed my programming on deep levels, especially when it came to relationships and the meaning of life.

This is something I’ve been thinking about lately, and my recent meditations on life reminded me of the following quote from the great Anaïs Nin:

“The secret of a full life is to live and relate to others as if they might not be there tomorrow, as if you might not be there tomorrow. It eliminates the vice of procrastination, the sin of postponement, failed communications, failed communions.

This thought has made me more and more attentive to all encounters, meetings, introductions, which might contain the seed of depth that might be carelessly overlooked. This feeling has become a rarity, and rarer every day now that we have reached a hastier and more superficial rhythm, now that we believe we are in touch with a greater amount of people, more people, more countries. This is the illusion which might cheat us of being in touch deeply with the one breathing next to us.

The dangerous time when mechanical voices, radios, telephones, take the place of human intimacies, and the concept of being in touch with millions brings a greater and greater poverty in intimacy and human vision.”

The interesting thing is that this quote not only provides advice on how to live a full, meaningful life but it’s also so timeless that you could smuggle the word “internet” into it, and you wouldn’t even notice that it wasn’t actually written in present time.

For me, the meaning of life is to live it fully, being present and savoring every second of it, because we never know if this moment is the last one or if we have thousands more. This can be hard these days, especially in such a cyber-focused world where everyone seems so close yet we have never been farther apart—even from the person sitting right next to us.

~

Please consider Boosting our authors’ articles in their first week to help them win Elephant’s Ecosystem so they can get paid and write more.

~