The Fragility of Life: Don’t Wait to Live It
Life is short, relationships are sacred, and gratitude is the only way forward.
I've been thinking a lot lately about the fragility of life.
How someone you love can be gone in an instant.
It makes me more aware of each moment and how I am living.
Am I living for a tomorrow that may not come? Am I being passive toward others because I believe there will always be another day?
If you’ve been reading Unrealized Purpose for long, you know my heart behind why I started writing here instead of recording videos on YouTube.
Unrealized Purpose used to be a podcast that my friend and I ran on YouTube and Spotify for a couple of years. We talked about purpose and mindset. At first, it was simply a project I wanted to build because I was already sharing content in the self-development space. A weekly podcast felt like a natural extension of that.
But everything changed about 11 months ago when my brother passed away.
The project immediately took on a new meaning. I began asking myself hard questions: Was I present enough in his life? Did I encourage him as much as I should have? Did I show up when it mattered most? The list could go on.
With time, I’ve made peace with those questions. I know I was doing the best I could. But I also know I can always be better. And with time and experience, I will be.
The Weight of Relationships
This past year has made one thing clear: relationships are core to life and growth. For a long time, I thought I could do everything on my own. I was wrong.
The relationships you develop - both personal and professional - have a massive impact on your trajectory. We really do become the average of our closest friends.
This plays out everywhere. In business, people hire people they like. Decisions are made with a mix of logic and emotion, but ultimately emotion tips the scale. Neuroscience even backs this up - the left and right brain process choices differently, but emotion is what drives action.
In personal life, your friends and your partner shape whether you strive for more or settle for less. Those closest to you can either build you up or quietly encourage you to stay the same.
That’s a scary truth, but it’s still truth. We need each other. As much as we may try to resist it, we are wired for relationships.
And not just any relationships - we need friendships that push us forward. People who live with presence, who are growing themselves, who invite us to grow alongside them.
If you’re sitting in a room with two close friends who are present and hyper-focused on growth, wouldn’t that influence you to do the same?
The Danger of Resentment
But here’s the caveat: you have to choose to be encouraged by others’ growth, not resentful of it.
I have a couple of friends who are, in my opinion, hyper-successful. One works in sales and insurance, and the other runs a concrete company in my hometown.
We talk often. While I share my wins with them, they also share theirs. We’re advancing in our own ways.
But if I’m not careful, I notice myself becoming jealous of their success - the big clients they land, the financial wins they bring home for their families. I’m happy for them, but sometimes I doubt my own level of success.
When that happens, I have to ground myself. I have to reframe their stories - not as reasons to envy, but as encouragement to keep leveling up. Their success can be fuel for me if I let it.
Few people are lucky enough to have friends who are striving for more, and I count myself one of them.
It’s easy to look at a friend who’s winning and feel jealousy rise. But if you can reframe it - if they can win, I can win - their success becomes fuel instead of a wall.
That mindset shift alone can change everything. Because the truth is, we either let relationships inspire us or let them control us. And the choice is always ours.
Life Is Fragile
These past few months, leading up to the one-year anniversary of my brother’s passing, have been a constant reminder: while life may feel long, it’s also painfully short. You wake up and another birthday has passed. Another year gone.
What did we do with it? Did we live each moment fully, or spend it worrying about what might happen? Did we brush off kindness because we were caught up in ourselves? Did we push away friends out of envy instead of gratitude?
The right people won’t remember the possessions you left behind when you’re gone. They’ll remember you - the relationship they had with you, and how you treated the ones you loved.
The logo of Unrealized Purpose is a butterfly. It’s a symbol of change, of fragility, of the grace of life. We grow, we change, and then we’re gone. What is beautiful doesn’t last forever.
So don’t waste your beautiful life in dread and resentment. Choose to live in the now. Choose gratitude. Choose presence. Choose friendship. Because it can all be gone in an instant.
Whenever you feel jealousy, envy or quietly admiring someone, acknowledge that you have never spoken those feelings aloud. It should make one wonder whether they carry the same thoughts about you, hidden in silence. People normally don’t confess such things because fear of exposure lingers or maybe they wrestle with what words and how to say it. So the truth is left unspoken and both sides live unaware of how deeply they are seen.