If I were to think about the supreme question that I would ask myself in the last day of my life, I think that what I expressed in this title would differentiate clearly from the multitude of question marks which us, humans, are bound to have in this lifetime and beyond it.

It’s just that I would put everything in the past tense:

How much:

• did I allow myself to truly live from what I had to experience?
• was I able to receive from what I’ve been offered?
• was I able to give back?
• did I let myself to be truly lived by what life means?
• did I understand that life means a continuous flow of experiences that you only have to live in their entirety just the way they come to you?

Becoming friends with death in order to live fully

The moment I had the courage to ask myself these questions, there was a profoundly healing movement that took place in my soul that changed me forever.

What I did in that moment was that, together with our most loyal friend – the last point of our lives or, briefly, death – I walked backwards on the thread of my life.

In order to explore all the un-lived life within me, all that I didn’t allow myself to live, all the energy I blocked, all the life sequences left unexplored to the maximum.

All the life I mutilated and killed within me, all that I let become rock hard in me and all that I did not allow to flow.

All the things I hung onto because of the fear I would lose them.

Everything I didn’t experience out of the fear that I would feel pain.

The things I didn’t look at out of the fear that I would not be the same anymore.

The moments I didn’t allow to be touched by out of fear that I will shatter into pieces.

What happened was that I allowed myself to truly mourn all the un-lived life inside of me, everything that was half dead within. And like after any other grief took to its completion, in that moment, I started hearing the call of life that waits to be lived.

Hearing the call of life

There is such a boiling, unexpected, enthusiastic and wonderful place within us that waits to be allowed to flow.

No matter what we have to do throughout a day, that place within is there. Since we open our eyes and until we close them back, eager to give meaning to every second we live every day.

No matter if we go through pain or happiness that point within us can deliver us, every second, the fullness of the experience, no matter what the experience is.

And yes, now that I found it again, I can say with maximum responsibility: that place inside of us is the most important thing in our lives.

You can lose absolutely everything but if there is that counterpoint within you that is well built, you have not lost anything from what truly matters to you.

After pain, fullness

But I can tell you one thing: on the road to the life inside of you, you can feel such a great pain when you do this inner digging that there will be moments when you will have preferred you had never started.

But this is the only way you can come back to being alive and offer you back to yourself, in the most authentic way possible. And it is the only way you can live a life that you can truly call “full”, even though sometimes it’s hard and other times full of challenges.

Maybe many of us won’t want to pay this price to feel that we live entirely. Maybe all that we want is to live peaceful lives.

But what I wish for each of us, no matter what our choice is, to have the courage to ask ourselves before reaching the moment when we won’t be able to do anything anymore, on our death bed:

How much did I allow myself to take from what life offered me?