You're Going to Die Anyways. So Start Living.
Just someone who fell on his face in 2025 and learned a few things worth remembering
Tomorrow is just another day.
That’s what the utilitarian in me wants to say. Monday is no different from Sunday. The week flipped, so what? If we’re being purely logical, today is just another Earth rotation about its axis, no different from yesterday and the day before that. A new week? an arbitrary seven-day cycle we invented. A new year? Just the Earth completing another lap around the sun.
But you know what? Fuck that noise.
If I reduce everything to pure utility, what’s the point? If love is just evolutionary programming for reproduction, then a kiss is just a filthy exchange of saliva and bacteria. If we strip life down to its function, we lose what makes it worth living. There’s something beautiful in experiences that can’t be measured, weighed, or justified on a spreadsheet. Feelings. Euphoria. The irrational choice to believe a date on a calendar matters because we decide it matters.
We create meaning. That’s the whole game.
So I’m riding along in the basking euphoria of the New Year, even if it’s arbitrary, by reflecting on what 2025 taught me. Saying “this year taught me a lot” feels cliché and repugnant, leaving me cold and sangfroid in a moment that demands more honesty.
I didn’t achieve all my goals this year. Not even close.
That’s the point of setting crazy ass goals though. You don’t get to achieve them. The reward lives in the chase, not the achievement. In pursuing mine, I learned a few things worth remembering.
I’m writing this mostly as a note to my future self, something to look back on when I forget. But I’m also a spring that brings forth water. If a thirsty stranger stops to drink, who am I to deny them? Take what resonates. Leave the rest.
So what did 2025 actually teach me? Here's the first thing:
I- Intellectual Honesty:
Make sure that tomorrow, as the poet Longfellow said, finds you farther than today. Further along. Better off. Smarter. More able. That’s the approach.
—Ryan Holiday
Nine times out of ten, you won’t be the smartest person in the room. Or the most capable. Or the most talented, best looking, most accomplished, pick your metric. Someone will always be better. That’s just math. You can improve your odds through work and determination, but even that has limits. You’ll still walk into rooms where you’re outclassed.
And that’s fine.
The trap is thinking comparison will save you. It won’t. Measuring yourself against others is a fool’s errand because the finish line keeps moving. There’s always someone sharper, faster, further ahead. The game is rigged from the start.
The only yardstick worth using: Did tomorrow meet you better than yesterday?
That’s it. Did you improve on your previous self? Not on some stranger’s highlight reel, not on what your former classmate is doing, not on whoever LinkedIn says you should be. Just you versus the person you were twenty-four hours ago. That’s the only comparison that matters because it’s the only one you can actually control.
Now, is comparison completely useless? No. I’d be lying if I said I never look at what others are doing. It gives me a reference frame, shows me what’s possible if I push harder. Seeing someone execute at a higher level can light a fire. But I’m careful not to let it become a trap. There will always be people far better than me. That’s a fact.
All I can do is look forward, build a framework that works for my life, and make sure tomorrow meets me better than yesterday. That’s the only race I’m running and that’s the one you should too.
II— Not Your Fault, But Your Problem:
Full disclosure: I’m typing this during a New Year’s church service. I don’t think it matters where you are when the calendar flips, but my sisters wanted me to come. And low-key, I like the taste of the air when midnight hits and a room full of strangers erupts into shouting “Happy New Year!” That collective desperation for things to be different. That hope that somehow, this time, we’ll get it right, even when we almost never do.
“In life our first job is this, to divide and distinguish things into two categories: externals that I cannot control, but the choices I make with regard to them I do control. Where will I find good and bad? In me, in my choices.”
― Epictetus
I look to the left. People around me have their eyes closed, hands raised, asking for healing from wounds they didn’t cause. Trauma. Strained relationships. Broken childhoods. I get it. I really do.
Because I used to do the same thing, except my prayers looked different. I blamed my past. I blamed the people who hurt me. I blamed circumstances I couldn’t control. And I was right. That’s the fucked up part. I was absolutely, objectively right about who wronged me and how.
But being right didn’t change anything. Nothing at all.
So I adopted a framework: It’s not your fault, but it’s always your problem.
Say it out loud if you need to. The childhood that fucked you up? Not your fault. The parents who couldn’t parent? Not your fault. The trauma, the neglect, the moments that carved holes in you that still haven’t filled? None of it was your fault. In fact, the injustice of it should make you angry.
But it’s your problem now.
The emotional baggage you’re carrying? That’s yours. The triggers that hijack your relationships? Yours. The patterns you picked up just to survive that now sabotage you? Also yours. Not because you earned them. Not because it’s fair. But because they’re living in your body, in your life, and nobody else can deal with them for you.
Blame puts the power in their hands. “They broke me, so they have to fix me.” Except they won’t. They can’t. They might not even know they should. You’re sitting there waiting for someone to undo what they did, and they’re out living their life, completely unaware you’re stuck.
But ownership? Ownership puts the power in your hands. “This happened to me, so I’m dealing with it.” Not because it’s fair. Because you want to be free more than you want to be right.
When you shift from third-person (”they ruined my life”) to first-person (”I have to rebuild my life”), the focal point moves from someone else to you. You stop waiting for someone else to act. You’re not dependent on an apology that’s never coming. You can go to therapy. Set boundaries. Confront the trauma or walk away from it. You accept reality, then move.
But it’s always, always by taking action.
III—It’s Always A You Problem:
Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become the next moment. By the same token, every human being has the freedom to change at any instant.
—Viktor Frankl.
When you keep falling short of a goal, when you want something desperately but it never materializes, when you’re doing everything “right” but nothing’s working, the issue isn’t desire. You want it badly enough. The issue is you haven’t become the person capable of getting it.
Let me be honest about this because it happened to me. There was this girl I was crazy about. Smart as hell, ambitious, the kind of beautiful that makes you stupid. By every vanity metric I could think of, she was a 10, a baddie infact. And I wanted her. Tried everything. Showed up, made moves, shot my shot repeatedly.
She ghosted me.
And for a while, I told myself it was bad timing, bad luck, that she couldn’t see what I was offering. But the truth? I wasn’t an 11 when i wanted a 10. You can’t be broke, out of shape, and directionless and expect to attract someone who has their shit together. That’s not how it works. She didn’t owe me attraction just because I wanted her. I had to become someone worth choosing.
That stung. Still does a little. But it taught me something crucial.
If you want something better, anything better, you have to ask yourself: am I better? Am I worthy of the goal I’ve set? And if the answer is no, then the work isn’t chasing harder. It’s building yourself into someone who deserves what they’re reaching for.
This applies to everything. Want a six-figure job? Are you six-figure capable? Want a committed relationship? Are you emotionally available enough to sustain one? Want respect in your field? Have you put in the work to earn it?
The gap between where you are and where you want to be isn’t about luck or fairness or timing. It’s about capability. And capability is something you build through work, through failure, through becoming someone different than who you are today.
Reality doesn’t adjust to your wishes. You adjust yourself until you’re worthy of what you want. That’s the game. It’s not fair, but it’s honest. And honesty beats self-deception every time.
Now here’s the paradox: becoming worthy of your goals requires action. But action requires starting before you feel ready. So how do you bridge that gap?
You don’t. You jump.
Fourth lesson…
IV—Life Rewards The Bold And Favors The Brave.
Fortune favors the brave, that sort of thing.
—Phil Knight.
If I had to explain any success I had in 2025, monetary or mental or any other measure you want to use, it came down to one thing: Audacity. I started before I was ready. And I can’t emphasize this enough because it contradicts everything we’re taught. We think readiness precedes action. It doesn’t. Starting is what makes you ready.
Take writing. I wanted to write for years. But I convinced myself I wasn’t good enough. I came finish-line close to failing English in school. My punctuation was terrible (still is). I couldn’t maintain a stream of thought long enough to finish a coherent paragraph. The list of reasons not to start was endless and very legitimate.
But if I’d waited until I was “ready,” I’d still be waiting. I could’ve spent ten years reading grammar textbooks, studying sentence structure, building the perfect foundation. Instead, I just started writing. And you know what happened?
I looked stupid. A lot. In-fact i still do.
My early stuff was rough. Arguments fell apart. Ideas went nowhere. I published things I now cringe at. But that fear of looking stupid, that public exposure of my weaknesses? It taught me more than any textbook could. Weak arguments collapse on the page, so I learned to build stronger ones.
You can’t fake depth in writing; it’s sniffable from a distance, so I learned to research properly. Every thin idea got exposed, so I learned to develop them fully before putting them out there.
The classroom would’ve taught me rules. Starting taught me how to think.
The gap between wanting something and having it isn’t closed by preparation. It’s closed by action. You don’t get better at writing by studying writing. You get better by writing badly until you write well. You don’t become confident by waiting to feel confident. You become confident by doing the thing that scares you until it doesn’t anymore.
Life doesn’t reward the qualified. It rewards the people who move. The ones who start the business with no experience. Who publish the imperfect work. Who risk looking stupid in exchange for getting better.
Those waiting to be ready will wait forever. You’ll never feel ready before you start. Starting itself is what makes you ready. So begin unqualified. Begin imperfect. Begin afraid. Just begin.
V— Remember you must die, Remember to live:
My formula for greatness in a human being is Amor Fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it…but love it.
—NIETZSCHE
And if there’s any guiding principle the years have beaten into me, over and over until I couldn’t ignore it anymore, it’s this: make the most of your life and love every bit of it. The suffering and the celebration. The heartbreak and the healing. The losses that emptied you and the wins that filled you back up. The bad times that tested you. The trauma that changed you. All of it matters. All of it counts.
It’s in the contrast, in the violent swing between ecstasy and despair, that we find life’s meaning. How would you recognize joy if you’d never been gutted by loss? The valleys make the peaks worth climbing. You can’t have one without the other. They’re not opposites. They define each other.
Two Latin phrases sum it all up. I’ve tattooed them on my brain: Memento mori, memento vivere. Remember you must die, so remember to live.
You’re going to die. Our time here is finite, unrepeatable, and completely uncertain. You could have fifty years left or fifty days. There’s no way to know. Everyone reading this is running out of time, tick by tick, breath by breath. I’m not being morbid. It’s just true.
And if that’s true, if our time here is finite and unrepeatable, then what the hell are we doing half-assing our way through life? Waiting to feel ready? Playing small because we’re scared of looking stupid?
Death gives life urgency. It strips away the bullshit. When you realize your days are numbered, you stop spending them on things that don’t matter. You start taking risks. You start saying what you mean. You start doing the things you’ve been putting off because “someday” might never come.
I think about this every time I’m afraid to start something. Every time I hesitate before taking a risk. Every time I catch myself waiting for permission that’s never coming. Death doesn’t care if you were ready. Death doesn’t care if you played it safe. Death just shows up and collects. So the only logical response is to squeeze every drop of life out of the time you have left.
But remembering you must die is only half the equation. You also have to actually live. Not survive. Not merely exist, scrolling through other people’s highlight reels while your own life atrophies. Actually engage with the terrifying, beautiful, stupid, magnificent experience of being alive.
Which brings me to the second principle: Amor fati. The love of your fate.
This concept comes from the Stoics, and it’s deceptively simple: love everything that happens to you. Not tolerate it. Not accept it reluctantly. Love it. The good fortune and the bad luck. The moments that elevated you and the moments that destroyed you. All of it. Because it’s your life. It’s the only one you get. No redos. No do-overs. No rewind button.
I won’t pretend I’ve mastered this. Some days I still rage against things I can’t change. Some days I’m bitter about how things turned out. But I’m learning that even in the worst moments, there’s something to extract. A lesson. A perspective shift. A strength I didn’t know I had.
Find a way to make meaning in your life even when it doesn’t make sense. Especially when it doesn’t make sense. Because meaning isn’t something you find lying around. It’s something you create. You take the raw material of your experiences—the trauma, the failures, the moments that broke you—and you forge them into something that matters. Not because they were fair. Not because you deserved them. But because they happened, and now it’s your job to decide what they mean.
That girl who ghosted me? I could’ve let that define me as unworthy. Instead, I let it redefine what I needed to become. The near-failure in English? Could’ve convinced me I wasn’t meant to write. Instead, it taught me that “meant to” is a myth. You become what you decide to become, regardless of where you start.
Everything that happens to you is raw material. The question is: what are you building with it?
Look, I didn’t write this to instruct or teach. what does this 18 year old know about life? I’m just someone who stumbled through 2025, fell on my face more times than I can count, and learned a few things I don’t want to forget. If something here resonates with you, take it. Use it. Make it yours. If it doesn’t, drop it and keep moving.
But whatever you do, live. Really live.
I hope to see you next year, far better than last year left you. I hope you live every day like it’s your last because, eventually, one of them will be. And somehow, someway, I hope you find meaning when life doesn’t make sense. Because it won’t. Life doesn’t make sense most of the time.
But that’s not an excuse to stop living. That’s the whole f*cking point.
—Abimbola.
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