type
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Published
date
Apr 7, 2026
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you-only-live-once
summary
You only live once — so don't let other people's opinions trap you, and don't let the past hold you back. Be yourself.
tags
thoughts
life
reflection
growth
category
Life Essays
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So many things in life cause chaos and anxiety, but at the end of the day, "you only live once" puts it all into perspective.
Because we really can only live in the present — this very minute, this very second.
Time slips through your fingers, but your experience of life doesn’t. Your memory might fade, but what you’ve been through changes you in ways you can’t undo. Think of it this way: if we’re neural networks, our weights are constantly being updated by every new thing we encounter — even if it’s just a shift at the fifteenth decimal place. Some changes are dramatic. Others show up in the tiniest ways. It depends on who you are.
Friend A comes to me with her pain. It stems from caring too much about what others think, and from being trapped in her own past. She’s a good person at heart, but when people fail to see her good intentions, she spirals — she gets sad, she can’t sleep, she punishes herself over and over with other people’s indifference. I tell her: you only live once, so stop overthinking it. If someone’s upset by what you said or did, but you know you weren’t trying to hurt them — that’s enough. We don’t always say what we mean. Sometimes we say the opposite of what we feel. And sometimes people just don’t like the way we express ourselves. But if we don’t like it either, we can keep adjusting as we go — not “fixing” ourselves exactly, just changing, because only change lets us keep up with this ever-changing world.
Friend B is hyper-sensitive to anything anyone says about her. She’s always running, always competing for first place. But here’s the thing — the world doesn’t belong to whoever’s ranked number one. Everything you have, every resource you’ve accumulated, is ultimately business — it needs to be converted into productivity. There’s no real hierarchy of strong and weak; what creates value is what matters.
Sartre wrote in Existentialism Is a Humanism:
L’homme n’est rien d’autre que ce qu’il se fait. Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself. —— Jean-Paul Sartre, L’existentialisme est un humanisme, 1946
You are nothing other than what you make of yourself.
I tell my friends: nobody stays the same forever. The only constant is change itself. Don’t box yourself in. Don’t let yourself be trapped by the past, and don’t limit yourself to who you are right now — because no one gets to define you. If we care about what others think, the most we can really hope for is: “he’s not a bad person.” As for whether you’re a good person? Everyone has their own standard. So worrying too much about it is pointless.
In life, we encounter all kinds of situations and all kinds of perspectives. We might feel like we’re not doing enough, but in other people’s eyes, we’re already doing great. And sure, nothing is ever perfect — but there’s no need to be so hard on ourselves. At the end of the day, you only live once. We’re here to experience. But I want to hold on to the present, see my own growth, and become myself — not somebody else.
In this moment, I suddenly understand why people back home get trapped in family dynamics. Because that’s their entire world. Because they never stepped outside to see what else is out there. Maybe they never truly looked inward, never figured out what they actually want. I know this might sound selfish, but right now, what I want is to become myself. Just like my original motivation for pursuing a PhD — not to waste my own time, to create something that’s truly mine. So that when I look back on these years, I can say: yeah, those were full years. They meant something.
You only live once.
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