Here’s To The Day You Start Living
I need you to promise me one thing. Actually, no. I need you to promise yourself one thing. Promise yourself that with every single cell that exists in your body, you will live right now. Please don´t waste anymore Mondays wishing they were Fridays. Instead, open your eyes and be grateful to be alive. Watch the way the sunlight pours through your window and smile. Please don’t complain so much about how you have to get up early every day. Instead, take that opportunity to watch the sunrise and admire the endless beauty of the sky.
Promise yourself you will start living and finding beauty in the small things life gives us. Those afternoons you spent driving across the city singing your favorite songs to the top of your lungs. The summer nights. The beach bonfires. Feeling the ocean breeze through your hair. All the times you laughed so hard your stomach began to hurt. The hot showers on cold winter days. Bumping on old friends. Finding dried flowers in books. The rainbow after it rains.
Promise yourself you will start living. Right now. Right here.
Don’t save your favorite perfume for special occasions. Wear it every day. Buy that flowery summer dress you´ve always wanted. Love your body and all its imperfections. Look into the mirror and be grateful for your existence. Your whole life you´ve been told you can only wear bikinis if your belly is perfectly flat. But you know what? To hell what other think. Wear that bikini and get the tan of your life. Stay in on a Friday night, you deserve time alone. Put on that very expensive facemask and prepare yourself a relaxing bubble bath.
Buy that plane ticket. Go on adventures more often. There are nearly two hundred different countries that are waiting to be explored. Walk on the woods and breathe in that fresh pure air you can only find there. Skinny-dip on a lake under a sky full of shooting stars. Visit places that leave you breathless and make you feel so tiny and so big at the same time. Run barefoot through grass fields and dance under the rain. Lie on your back and admire the stars.
Smile at strangers on the street and enjoy that moment of joy when they smile right back at you. Be kind. Call your childhood friends and ask them how life’s treating them. Talk about your very first sleepover together and how you cannot believe it has been so long since then. Be a shoulder to cry on but don´t forget you are also allowed to do the crying whenever you need it. When you love someone, be brutally honest and tell them, in fact, shout it out from the top of the tallest building in your city. Don´t let the what ifs keep you back. Hug your dad and kiss your mother´s cheek more often. Tell your brother how much you love him and write a note to your sister reminding her that she will always be your best friend.
Be spontaneous. And courageous. And brave enough to choose and live the life you want. The journey is going to be messy and sometimes confusing but I promise that it’s also going to be beautiful and rewarding. You see, we only get to be here once, so we better make it count, because imagine what a terrible thing it must be, to wake up one day only to realize you didn’t do all the things you wanted when you had the chance. 
