Live life to the fullest. One of life’s biggest cliches, but the lesson everyone must strive to learn. In Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, the citizens have stopped living because it challenges societal norms. There is a point to living. There is a meaning to life. However, you will not find meaning if you live your entire life hiding. In order to live, you must be intentional. Own your choices, your failings, your successes, your hopes, and your dreams. The beauty of life is in the effort it takes to live, and Bradbury shows us the faded beauty that encompasses our lives if we choose not to. After all, the only life worth living is a life lived intentionally.

          One of the biggest things people in our world face today is death. From the day you are born, the only guarantee is that one day you will die. Since there are no guarantees, your only option is to live each day to the fullest and live without regret. A life lived in every way possible will ensure that some part of you will live on once you are gone. Granger remembers his grandfather very clearly for the things he did, as he says, “When I was a boy my grandfather died, and he was a sculptor. He was also a very kind man who had a lot of love to give the world, and he helped clean up the slum in our town; and he made toys for us and he did a million things in his lifetime; he was always busy with his hands. And when he died, I suddenly realized I wasn’t crying for him at all, but for the things he did. I cried because he would never do them again… He was individual…He shaped the world. He did things to the world” (148-149). This is the real pain we feel when someone leaves us. It isn’t necessarily the loss of the person. It is the loss of what that person did. When someone lives a full life, you will remember them for what they did, not just who they were. So if you fail to live a life worth remembering, if you fail to live an intentional life, then you will have failed as a human being on this earth.

           Yet even if you believe you failed to live a life worthy of remembering, there will still be hope. “Everyone must leave something behind when he dies…Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you’re there” (149-150). When you die, once you’re gone, someone will remember you. Even if it is only one person, you will have done something to be remembered. It should be the goal of every person to do something worth remembering, even if it is only remembered by a few people. It is an easily achieved goal if you live a life worth living. If you live every day to the fullest, you will make an impact on the people around you. You will be remembered. You will live a life worth living.

          There’s a really nice song by OneRepublic called I Lived. It is the perfect song to sum up what I am trying to say here. It talks about living every day of your life, and not regretting any part of it once you reach the end. The chorus says: “I, I did it all. I owned every second that this world can give. I saw so many places, the things that I did. Yeah, with every broken bone, I swear I lived.” When you reach your last day, you don’t want to look back on a life spent hiding away from the world. You want to be able to look back on a life lived to the fullest. The worst thing to happen for a person is to look back on a life of regret. So, take this chance. Live your life. Live every day like it’s your last.

At the end of the day, this is the only life you’re given. You don’t have infinite days. You don’t have every chance you want. You get what you’re given, and this is your life. If you choose to live in the shadows, hiding from everyone and everything, you will have wasted every opportunity you were given. You will have wasted a beautiful life, one worth living to the fullest until there was nothing left to live. In this one life, we are only guaranteed death. Everything else is up to us. It is up to us to make life worth living. It is up to us to live life every day. Live every day like it’s your last. Live every day like you won’t have another one. Live a life worthy of living. Please, just live your life.