What really matters in life

I am no expert on life, but after all, who is? I'm not 80, and I haven't fought in a major war, I'm no child prodigy either. Do I really have needed to do years of research to tell people how to live their lives? No. And that is not my intention. My intentions are simply to put my thoughts out there and maybe relate with others.

We are all entitled to live out lives the way we want to. People always say that happiness is the most important thing in life. But how does one reach a state of happiness. I think the term happiness is not a state, it's a moment of our lives. If we catch ourselves being sad, angry or confused, does that mean we don't live happy lives because we aren't always happy? Someone can catch us feeling happy and we are happy in that moment. But shouldn't we live life in a neutral state so that we are ''happy'' with ourselves and our current situation? I think that happiness is more complicated than just smiling or laughing. If you live life with a false sense of the word, sort of like taking the blue pill, can you fully appreciate the happy moments?

It's sort of like when you get a cold, and you have been taking all those days you feel okay for granted. Catching a cold gives you perspective and means that you can appreciate the okay times better, and the happy times even more. Happiness is feeling at peace with yourself and others, but being vulnerable enough to appreciate the sometimes very tough lessons life throws at us.

Health

I don't like to think of health as being the most important thing in life, since I am not in the best shape and my diet isn't flawless. My stress levels are through the roof sometimes and I take a lot of medication for many other health issues, that I could not possibly call myself ''healthy''. I don't think being healthy is like winning a trophy, you can keep the trophy without ever having to work hard ever again in your life. But you can't keep the health since it is something that is constantly changing as we age, and more importantly, when regarding mental health, as we go through different periods of our lives. We are allowed to feel unhealthy when going through grieving for example, but if our life seem pain-free and simple, then we are obliged to be ''healthy'', otherwise we look lazy.

I see great value in exercise, and a healthy diet (we all know what that is, so let's not say stuff like low-carb etc.). I'm especially passionate on the subject of Childhood Obesity. Being healthy takes time and taking care of yourself should be the most important thing to do in life, because at the end, when people leave you for a number of countless reasons, all you have is yourself.

Mental health is often forgotten about when discussing health in general. That is because for most people, it's mostly hidden, as you can judge someone's health level by the way someone looks most of the time. You look at their skin, weight, posture, the bags under their eyes, how many days they take off at work. But judging mental health is a hard one, as many of us have learned to pretend our way through life - myself included. Therefore, we fake looking happy to other people because we want to be perceived fit-enough to work, love, and befriend.

Relationship you have with yourself

I could preach about the importance of ''loving yourself'' all day long if I could. But you already know that. I'm not going to tell you all the clichés of why you should not worry about anything because ''life is too short to worry''! Sometimes we will worry and we will let others put us down - perhaps involuntarily, perhaps because we feel we deserve it. The relationship you should have with yourself should be the strongest relationship that you will ever form in your life. As we get older, we do get wiser and we start to appreciate how complex and difficult it is to understand deep and troubled selves.

This is why we should embrace the times wen we are alone. In those moments, we are able to truly delve deep into our minds and truly appreciate all the bad and all the good things about ourselves. Learning about ourselves should be a never-ending journey. We should try new things, talk to new people, put ourselves in embarrassing or tough situations, where we have to question our own values and morals. What makes a person genuine, is standing by your values in the face of criticism.

Relationships you have with others

Humans are, by nature, and survival instinct, social creatures. We crave social interactions. That is why it's so hard to be alone for such long periods of your life - we are ultimately dependant on others to keep us sane and functioning. I know that contradicts my point of embracing loneliness (only when it's not self-sabotaging), but balance is the key here.

We should all strive for happy and healthy relationships - non-toxic, non-malicious friendships. We should strive to make new connections, but never forget to nurture the old ones. I heard a saying the other day...

''You can always make new friends, but you can never make old ones.''

And that is so true. We tend to forget to ask people how they are, especially ones that aren't in our lives as much due to distance, commitments or ill health. By nurturing old connections, we can better ourselves for future connections as we can see them as more long-term or ''friends for life''. We start to see friendship as an investment into our happiness.

Befriend a diverse groups of people, who may not necessarily hang out together due to cultural or age differences. It opens your eyes to new perspectives and various new opinions of life, that you probably may not have been exposed to if you stayed within your ''own people''. When I go to ballroom dance, I'm surrounded by mainly 50+ old citizens who have perhaps more energy than half of young people today. Mary, the owner of the dance studio, has celebrated her 90th Birthday this week! She is still dancing and teaching and is so full of life - it's incredible! Age is not a factor in this and it makes it even more interesting to share how different our experiences are. I love listening to the experiences of older folks - they have lives so much longer than us as have gained wisdom one can only get with experience.

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All photographs belong to William Eggleston. My biggest photography inspiration and fellow colour enthusiast.