What makes a life worth living?

A wide open question that seems to be the one we spend our lives scrambling to answer. We study and we travel. We have babies and buy houses and make wrong choices. We love and we hurt. We pull 50, 60, 70 hour work weeks and try to pay the bills and we collapse into bed most nights, exhausted by all of it. 

We have become a tired people. And for all our efforts and all our days and all these hours of work, there is still the unanswered question of: what exactly makes a life worth living?

If I could look you in the eyes and ask you that question, I’m sure you would be able to give me some answers. Things like family, faith, your pets, community, laughter. Things like cheesecake and ocean waves and dancing. While all of it would be true, the problem is that we don’t seem to have a lot of space or time anymore for the very things that make our hearts beat and our souls tick. 

We know inherently what’s really important, don’t we? The answer to what matters is rarely Instagram or TikTok, an extra pay check or a new car. Yet we seem to spend the majority of our days chasing all of the above, filling our life up with stuff and promising ourselves that we’ll have time for what really matters later. I’ll call my sister tomorrow, I’ll play with the kids after I check Instagram, once I renovate my house I’ll dial back on the work hours.

Tick, tick, tick goes the clock. 

And these seconds slip by. 

In February my friend and I did a four day trek through the Rwenzori mountains that border Uganda and the Congo. For four days we did nothing but hike, laugh, eat, splash in icy rivers, stand wide eyed at the sleeping beasts of mountains around us. We were sweaty and muddy, miles away from cell service. We squatted over holes in the ground for the bathroom and warmed water over a fire for bucket showers. We stood under a sky blanketed by the brightest stars I have ever seen and we fell asleep at 9pm, laughing until we couldn’t stay awake anymore.

For four days there was nothing between us and the planet except the soles of our boots. 

And in those brief hours, everything else just… faded away. Life wasn't pressing or distracting. It was just lived. I wasn’t anxious or worried, no panic attacks caught me by surprise. I didn’t spend five hours a day scrolling. I just walked and breathed; that was all I could do, all I had to do. 

Strip away everything- the house, the car, the status, the job- and see what’s left. We often go through this life with a gnawing worry that we’re missing something, yet if most of us just walked the mountains, I think we would find some of the answers we’re searching for. Climb up and up, let your body carry you higher and further than you thought it could. Marvel at the grandeur of it all; the sun as it rises in the East, its warm colours bathing the sky. Stand in awe of the beauty of it and then drop to your knees when you realize that you, just as you are, have a unique place in the middle of this wild, messy planet we call home. Inhale breath into your lungs when you realize that you’re just as much apart of nature as those towering mountains and the white water of the rivers. 

I always feel like I come off the mountains different than when I went up them. Something changes in me every time. Our trek in the Rwenzoris was no different. We started on a Monday and finished on a Friday, four blissful days. We were tripping and slipping and hiking our way down on the last day, talking about the simplicity of being outside when we bumped into another group making their way up. We were about seven kilometres form the bottom at a rest stop when we waved hi to each other. They asked us how long we had been out here, “Four days,” we answered. They all exchanged glances, “You don’t know,” one of them said gently. 

My friend and I looked at each other, eyebrows raised, “Know what?” We asked. 

“Russia bombed the Ukraine,” they told us, wincing as they did. “Sorry to be the one to tell you.”

For a few years now I have come to the firm belief that being outside will change your perspective on life. But this? We had been laughing and hiking and eating a profuse amount of peanut butter sandwiches and the world was on fire, literally and metaphorically. 

If time were a currency, I fear we would be depositing all of our money into the wrong bank. Our lives go from harmony to chaos in the blink of an eye and the hardest things are apt to be the ones that blindside us at 3pm on some idle Tuesday. The house, the car, the followers on TikTok? It will all fade. But the family, the friends, the dinner around the table with the people you love? Giving your undivided attention- phone away- to your kids… it’s that stuff that matters. It matters that you dance when the music is playing and that you take deep breaths and that you call your friends. It matters when you volunteer and when you cook yourself healthy meals and when you spend time in the woods. It matters when you paint and when you visit your parents. It all matters, and it could all disappear in a second. 

I learned that in the mountains. 

You will, too.

See you out there. 

Written by: Annika Phillips