You’re Alive, But Are You Really Living?
Here we are, coming to the end of 2025. If I were to ask you how you feel about the year just gone, what would you say? Did you grow? Were your days filled with purpose, joy and excitement? Did you contribute something meaningful?
Or, perhaps, did your days feel stagnant, mundane, repetitive? You showed up at work each day and, sure, some days were better than others, but the overriding sense was one of simply going through the motions. Maybe you told yourself on the 1st January 2025 that this year would be different:
“This will be the year that I make a change, that I begin living a more intentional, meaningful life.”
But here we are at the end of 2025 and maybe nothing has changed.
People say that we spend about 1/3 of our waking lives working. Being an ex-auditor, I am professionally skeptical about this claim and I ran the numbers. Based on my calculations, that fraction actually comes out closer to 1/6 (about 16%). But, here’s the kicker. These working hours are not evenly distributed. Assuming that you work from roughly the age of 20 through to 60, these hours are concentrated in what will likely be your healthiest decades, your highest-energy years and your prime cognitive window.
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If we were just to look at those years in isolation, work does take up about a third (c. 31%), not of our waking life, but of our prime years. And, that does not include all the time you spend outside of work thinking about work. Because our enjoyment of our work, or lack of, ripples out and impacts all areas of our life.
How we spend our working hours in our prime years determines the vibrancy of our life’s canvas. Do you really want to spend your best years as a cog in a machine which will continue running regardless of whether or not you are there?
Maybe you’ve been justifying to yourself:
“It’s okay. Next year, once I have that promotion and pay rise, then I will begin to enjoy my work more, then I will be happy.”
But, if we were to step back, what evidence is there that this promotion and pay rise will bring you that lasting happiness and fulfilment which you seek?
I am speaking with absolutely no judgment here and genuine compassion, it is human nature. George Leonard observes:
“Seduced by the siren song of a consumerist quick-fix society, we choose a course of action which only brings the illusion of accomplishment, the shadow of satisfaction.”
We all have, as Jim Murphy puts it in Inner Excellence, a “deep thirst of being grounded and fulfilled”, and the more time I spend on this spinning rock, the more I believe that we are all seeking the same thing: that sense of peace and fulfilment.
Some people are in conscious pursuit of that feeling, naming inner peace and fulfilment as their goal. Others might not consciously be aware of it, but their decision to buy that new Ferrari or the bigger home is in the attempt to grasp that sense of being at peace with themselves.
The one sitting on the meditation cushion and the one behind the wheel of their new Ferrari in suburban London are both, I believe, looking for the same thing. Somewhere between the cushion and the Ferrari, there is a middle ground. That middle ground is the path of living a more meaningful life.
First, think deeply about: what you value, what you are passionate about and what your strengths are. Then reflect: what does success and a fulfilling life look like for you. Then, it is to start taking steps in that direction.
In ancient Greek, there are two words for life. One is bios (βίος): being physically alive, of having a beating heart and breathing lungs. The other is zōē (ζωή): life as a lived experience. If bios is about existence, zōē is about meaning. It is truly flourishing and engaging deeply with the world around you. Just because we have bios does not mean we are experiencing zōē.
Meaning, fulfilment, zōē - they don’t simply pop up in our porridge. We need to take action to move towards them. I am acutely aware that one day this life will end, and, as far as I am aware (but I am open to being proven wrong), we only get one shot here. I also believe that our collective fear of death isn't so much a fear of the fact of dying itself, but rather a fear of not having lived.
So, as 2025 slips away and with 2026 just around the corner, which one - bios (existing) or zōē (meaning) - best resembles your 2025? If you were to begin living a more meaningful life in 2026, what would that look like? What would you do differently? How could you better spend your finite time, energy and attention? Who would you spend it with? What choices would you make to ensure that, this time next year, you will be looking back on 2026 and telling me that you truly lived?
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