Do you have the faintest idea of what the other person is actually saying when they give this response? Of course not! Unless you know them extremely well, it is simply a pat phrase that has gained great popularity in the last few years. Do you even know what you mean when you response to someone else’s inquiry of how you are? Is it meant to suggest asking a deeper question? Or… is it meant to keep others away from what you truly are feeling?
Your ‘livin’ the life’ may be defined entirely different from another person… and probably is. So why do we continue to use a phrase that conveys absolutely nothing and is intended to strengthen the walls between people? One word that gained great popularity when I was in college was – anomie. Webster defines this state as: “personal unrest, alienation, and uncertainty that comes from a lack of purpose or ideals”. Lost? Perhaps, but I think it goes deeper.
Is this the malaise gripping people in today’s world? Does it underscore why the response is ‘livin’ the life’? Or is this too pessimistic a view of the state people are actually feeling? Are people truly in a rose colored glasses state? Perhaps the questions should be – how ’bout you? Are you doing and being who you are and loving it? Is life, even with its occasional moments of unrest, as positive as you want/need it to be?
I would argue that for anyone to truly be livin’ the life, they need to know who they are, who the Lord is, and be in relationship with Him. Jesus tells us in John 15:5 that apart from Him we can do nothing. That includes our mind, our will, our emotions – all of what makes us … us. It includes not just who and what we are, but how we go about doing this. It includes our relationship with the Lord and others. It includes everything that makes life worth living. It is joy and meaning and fruitfulness and hope and faith and love. We really can be livin’ the life – no fake, no bravado – truth. John 10:10 Jesus speaking:
“I have come that they may have life, and that they may
have it more abundantly.”
We are the ‘they’. Sounds live ‘living the life’ to me.
