In 1991, the band INXS released their first live album, and this was the title. One of the tracks on the album is the song, New Sensation, which includes the lyric, “live baby live.” In the lyric, the expression represents the short “I” version. So, is the title of the album meant to be expressed with a long “I” or a short one?
If you do some simple math, you’ll quickly realize this is something that I have been pondering for the last 35 years. I still don’t know the official answer, but I recently realized that the most important consideration for finding it is found in the I and the I in this example is you.
Before this descends into a rendition of Old MacDonald’s Farm, let me explain. You get to determine how much you will focus on and interpret the I in the way you live and make decisions.
You are undoubtedly aware of the old, and now heavily overused, cliché; there is no I in Team. Not only is there an I in live, the use of and emphasis on it determines the pronunciation and application of the word.
The cliché is meant to highlight the need for unselfish behavior when participating as a member of a team. Life and living, however, require that you focus on yourself first because you will go nowhere and achieve nothing if you don’t first figure out who you are, why you are here, and what you are going to do about it. To achieve this information, you must look inward and concentrate on yourself. Any decisions you make or direction you take without that information is pure guesswork at best. Anything positive achieved from guessing is mere luck and not sustainable.
As you look at your life today and assess where you are versus your expectations of yourself and your aspirations for who you want to be, ask yourself if you are present? Are you in the moment appreciating it for what it is and noting the positives and negatives? Are you building confidence and getting educated? Are you learning from your mistakes and progressing forward? Are you challenging yourself to be better and get stronger?
If you answered yes to those questions; fantastic. Skip to the end of this article to catch the clever summary and keep up the great work. If you answered no to some or all of those questions, you have some work to do.
In previous posts, we’ve discussed the importance of controlling what you can control. The purpose of this is to take as much responsibility as possible for all the things that you
have the power to decide and influence. When you start to feel overwhelmed and ineffective, it is helpful to remember that you have more ability and authority than you may be giving yourself credit for and the feeling you are experiencing may be the result of you concentrating on the wrong things.
At some point, you will experience adversity and trauma and that will cause you grief and heartache. How you process those moments and events and what you do to move forward are centered on controlling what you can control and living your life, not existing in a state where you are doing what you think others expect you to do or responding in a way that you have been taught to believe is normal.
If you are truly living your life, you have taken the time to get to know yourself and to be accountable to that person. You’ve done the work necessary to make decisions that are consistent with who you are. You are aware of your surroundings and your role in the existence around you. You are purposeful in your action and confident in your direction.
Whether you are using a short I or a long one, you’ve got everything covered. You have grown from your past but not gotten bogged down in it. You are planning for your future and taking action toward the achievement of the goals you have set for yourself. Most importantly, you are in the moment and not missing a minute of your life while those minutes inevitably fly by.
Life can be illustrated by a single organism. It can be found in a crack in the cement and evidenced by a weed that has taken root in a seemingly impossible environment. Whether fauna or flora, there are billions of examples of lives being led right now on our planet. There may even be previously unidentified anomalous phenomena alive and in existence beyond our planet.
Life, however, is different than living as we have defined it here and you get to decide whether you live with purpose, freedom, and happiness or you simply exist. You get to decide how you will define your purpose, what freedom looks like to you, and what makes you happy, but you need to live in the moment and be live when it occurs to figure those things out.
In the meantime, let’s get back to the question that started this article. I think the answer is that it’s both. You need to live baby live in the moment that everything is live baby live!
