A friend was in my room a few days ago and started writing on the whiteboard hanging from my roommate’s wardrobe door. This event shouldn’t have been noteworthy; we’re always leaving quotes, messages, drawings and “____ was here” messages for one another to find. But what she wrote that day in purple marker really struck me: “live for the moments that set your soul on fire.”
At the time I smiled, told her how pretty her handwriting was, and moved on with the conversation as she drew a flower on the right-hand corner of the board. The next day, I read the quote again as I lay in bed. Her cursive was still just as beautiful, the flower in the corner was a little smudged from my roommate opening the closet that morning, and the quote seemed a lot more significant. Of course this led me to ask myself the question “what moments are those?” I took a second to think about it, and the answer became clear.
For me, the moments that set my soul on fire are the ones that make me glad to be alive. They’re the ones where I’m smiling bigger than I should be, the ones where I have a sore stomach from laughing too hard, the ones where I’m listening to music on a drive with my friends, the ones I’ll never forget. As I sat there thinking, a million memories went through my mind like a movie playing on fast forward, just like they should.
The lesson that can be learned from all this is that we should always be searching for moments like that. In fact, we DESERVE endless moments like that. You should always be striving to set your soul on fire so that anyone can see it burning when they look at you. The happiness that comes from those memories should radiate from you, because they made you who you are. “Living for the moments that set your soul on fire,” reflecting on them when you get the chance, and encouraging others to do the same is a task worth taking on.
So write it in purple marker on your best friend’s whiteboard, say it to yourself every morning, make it the lock screen of your phone. It doesn’t matter how you remind yourself, but never forget to “live for the moments that set your soul on fire.”