Life Lived Maximally

Originally published June 4th, 2024

I remember the day I chose to live maximally.

In younger years I often waffled. This or that? Yes or no?

Then, one week til college graduation. Beach trip, whole school. Winding down. When should we drive home? Today or tomorrow? Get back early or one last day? Logistical swirl. Waffle Waffle Waffle.

All wafflers except one friend. “Who cares. Why would I leave? Give me more.”

Stupidly simple. But something flipped, for me. Stop thinking. Reject the question. Live more life. We’re young, for God’s sake! Let’s live!

And so I did. For 22-year-old Will, that meant crisscrossing the lower forty-eight, hitting those pop-up meccas of American life, college football tailgates. Flight after flight chasing the unsayable bliss: when the sun is up, and you’re buzzed, and you feel like you’re never gonna die.

One flight home I finished On The Road. Wow. 250 pages brimming with holy-hallelujah-YES of life lived maximally. Even the thought creates a warm swirl in my chest that I’ve never properly described, beyond this line with close friends: “The best books, man…you can feel them, you know?” Uh huh. But it’s true for me.

So on future football trips I would quote Kerouac’s infinite scroll: “Yes, but what do you want out of life? You see, the people for me are the mad ones, mad to live, mad to save, who burn burn burn like fabulous Roman candles streaking across the sky…” And the pretty girl nods and leaves for a white claw.

My idea of maximal living grew as I did. From college bars with names like “Fred’s” or “Rick’s” to living bolder Monday to Friday. Quitting work to build a company with two guys from the Internet. Spending my slim free time learning a language I might never use. Plastering my apartment walls with quotes from Rilke and Woolf and Emerson. Ditching pesky pricks of concern for grand ideas (or at least trying). Stop flicking mud off your shoelaces! Look up at the stars!

And this year it meant moving to China to finish this insane solo-kayak-trip-across-the-Pacific-Ocean, also called “attempting to learn 100% fluent Chinese, by yourself, just because it makes you feel foolishly alive.” And some days the unlearned vocab weighs heavy; some days the food tastes bad. Doubts prick like icicles. But then I return to just saying the words, and how maximally alive it makes me feel. And soon the worries melt, and Flow floods back once more. In it pours, that sunny-tailgate bliss, that On-The-Road feeling which I cherish dearly and will not successfully convey to you in words tonight.

Roar now true fire maximally
Truth’s flames will rage fantastically
And light a path toward Infinite Play.
Yes you will die, but not today.

Since I can’t offer you a test drive of my infinite inner landscape (we all have them, remember yours!), I’ll leave you with poet Ted Hughes’ stunning words, which admirably jab toward this Unsayable It, soaring close like an asymptote while still forever away:

“The only calibration that counts is how much heart people invest, how much they ignore their fears. People only regret that they didn’t live boldly enough, that they didn’t invest enough heart. That’s how we measure out our real respect for people—by the degree of feeling they can register, the voltage of life they can carry and tolerate—and enjoy. As Buddha says: live like a mighty river. And as the old Greeks said: live as though all your ancestors were living again through you.”

May we all live maximally, whatever that looks like for you.