#YOLO

YOLO: 

You only live once. 

This is perhaps THE most overused phrase right now, popular among many adolescents, like the handful of middle schoolers I have the pleasure of teaching. I've found myself using the phrase, mostly because I like to mock it. 

However, I'm not sure that many of us truly stop and think about what we're saying. What it really, truly means to say, "You only live once."


This fact was made abundantly clear as I faced open heart surgery. It really scared me. "What if I don't wake up?" I wondered. Cardiopulmonary bypass is no joke. Having your heart stopped is no joke. I trusted my doctors, and I trusted my body, but at the end of the day, I had to accept that waking up or not waking up was something that was completely out of my control. How annoying, for someone who had spent her entire life planning, goal-setting, and trying (and failing) to control every little aspect of her perfectly imperfect life. 

So, like the type-A person I am, I made a mental list (and another and another). I titled it "Things I Want to Have Done if I Don't Wake Up"... or something like that: 

• I don't want to go skydiving. Like ever.
• I don't want to go rocky mountain climbing.
• And I definitely don't want to go 2.7 seconds on a bull named Blue Manchu. 
• I do want to love. If I had only one day left, I would want to bask in the warmth of God's love for me. I would want to take in every breath and fill my lungs with beauty, joy and gratitude. 

All of a sudden, a lot of things seemed really trivial to me, almost hilariously trivial. Just a few months before, I had pulled all-nighter after all-nighter perfecting my final papers, studying for my final final exams, and revising my volunteer applications. I had worried about what I would tell people when they asked about my future plans. I had worried so much about what kind of label I would wear after graduation, when I no longer had the privilege of being called Scholar Maya, RA Maya, Band Geek Maya, or Domer Maya. I had worried so much about the labels I was giving myself that I forgot about the one label I would always wear: Beloved Maya. 

It's amazing to me that it took such an intense life event for me to understand one of the most important lessons ever: 

You are loved. You are love. Be love. Be loved. Beloved. 

via. 

At the end of the day, at the end of our lives, what defines us is how we loved. When everything is stripped away, what will always define me above all else, is my capacity to love and be loved.

What a freeing thought, and what an incredibly daunting honor it is to know that our biggest task in this life is to love and be loved. What a blessing it is to realize, in a few moments of absolute clarity, in the hallway between the exam room and the operating room, where things fit--and don't fit--into the bigger picture. To understand this truth is to be, at the same time, incredibly weak and incredibly empowered. I sincerely hope it doesn't take an open heart surgery or a near-death experience for any of you to realize this, but sometimes the scariest moments in life have a funny way of shaking us back to reality.

So love life.  Love it recklessly. Love it deeply and fiercely. Love yourself, love others, and fall in love with the beauty all around you. After all, you only live once. You only get one chance to take in all the love around you, to let it overflow in you, and explode that love back into the world. 

#YOLO.

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