My metric for living
On the art of feeling alive
“Once we stop rushing through life, we will be amazed by how much more life we have time for.” — Unknown
But what exactly is this “life” we’re referring to? To me, one way to think about life is less in hours and more in vitality, measured by two metrics: presence and agency.
The metric of presence
The first is the depth with which we experience a moment — the literal opposite of “going through the motions.” It can be easy to slip into a state of functional numbness, where we become machines that do work without truly feeling or experiencing ourselves. To me, to have “more life” is to embrace vitality — in other words, to reject that numbness.
I often think of the character Pari (played by Vijay) in the 2012 Tamil film Nanban, which I first watched when I was in middle school. The movie follows three friends at a high-pressure engineering college, contrasting a rigid academic system against Pari’s philosophy of curiosity, kindness, and love of learning. While his peers and college environment are consumed by the "rat race" of exams and competitions, Pari saw the classroom not as a hurdle, but as a playground. He treated the daily act of attending a lecture with the genuine thrill that today, we are going to learn something new. (Another one of my favorite quotes of Pari is “This is a college, not a pressure cooker,” a philosophy which can be applied to life as well.)
Beyond the classroom, this sense of heightened presence can manifest in a variety of ways: exchanging a smile with a stranger while waiting for the elevator, laughing at Cambridge’s unpredictable rain schedule, complimenting a classmate’s new glasses, picking up a dropped water bottle for someone, noticing the newly bloomed flowers, smell of the rain, or breeze on our face on the walk we make daily to campus. In addition to being “nice” things to do, they also strike me as proof of life. By living this way, I feel a heightened sense of connection to others and to the world around me, which gives me a sign of actually being alive during the day.
The metric of agency
The second metric is autonomy — the degree to which we feel in control of our time.
One thing MIT has taught me is that the art of leaning into this metric lies in thoughtfully choosing commitments that are meaningful: places where we want to invest and contribute our time, rather than places where we feel like our time is taken away from us.
Oftentimes, however, there are tasks that we aren’t thrilled about, like administrative responsibilities and scheduling logistics. In these cases, our language becomes saturated with the phrase “I have to.” I have to go to lab. I have to be at this meeting. I have to finish this pset. When we speak this way, we frame our lives as a series of cages we’ve been locked into. That said, hopefully, these commitments stem from volitional choices that at least enable something we want in the future. In these cases, recognizing that and reframing “I have to” as “I get to” or “I am doing X because it enables me to do Y later” can subtly return authorship to how our days are written.
Getting more out of the same 16 waking hours
To me, the “more life” that the quote refers to isn’t an extra hour added to the 24-hour clock. It is experiencing more vitality and meaning in the same 16 waking hours we already have — to not only have a beating heart, but also to actually feel alive.
What do I aspire for that to look like for me?
On the same walk I make every day to class, I can marvel at the cherry blossoms in front of Baker. I can say hi to the little kids of faculty and staff who frequent the Banana Lounge as I make myself a cup of tea. I can take the time and care to select classes, research projects, and organizations that feel meaningful to me — so that I know my time is going somewhere valuable, leading my hours to feel contributed rather than merely expended.
In some ways, the art of feeling alive is truly inhabiting the hours we live in — a sense of presence and agency can stretch those hours wide.