There’s an odd thing about life that nobody ever tells you straight. You’re taught how to make a living, but not how to actually live.
At school we’re driven to learn about fractions, state capitals, and the proper spelling of “Mississippi,” but not one teacher will ever sit you down and say, “Listen,—life is mostly about learning to sit with yourself without wanting to throw a chair through the window.” Which is, when you think about it, a much more practical lesson.
We are so preoccupied with achievement, acquisition, and arranging our calendars into neat little blocks of self-importance that we forget there is an art form more subtle than piano, more challenging than oil painting, and more elusive than tightrope walking: the art of just living. Not living well in the way glossy magazines mean—perfect kitchens, toned arms, weekend yoga retreats—but simply living. Being here. Existing without apology, without fanfare, without the endless business of improvement.
It’s a skill that takes decades to master, and even then, you’ll slip. Sometimes you’ll catch yourself trying to turn your morning coffee into a productivity hack (“Bulletproof coffee, guaranteed to make you twice as unbearable at meetings!”). Other times, you’ll fall for the siren call of self-optimization, as if downloading another meditation app will help you breathe better than the lungs you were born with. And yet, every now and then, you stumble into a quiet moment of unpolished living—watching the cat stretch in the sun, stirring sugar into tea, or standing barefoot on a patch of cool grass—and you realize: Ahh, this is it. This is the thing.
Chapter One: The Trouble with Living
The trouble with living is that most of us treat it like a career path. You’re meant to “make something of yourself,” which is an alarming phrase if you pause to think about it. What, exactly, are you right now—nothing? A lump of clay? A misplaced sock? The idea of “make something of yourself” suggests that existing, just as you are, is a bit of a half-baked effort, like bread pulled from the oven too soon.
So we go about patching ourselves up with goals, titles, and possessions. Some people collect degrees, others collect children, and still others collect pairs of running shoes that may never touch a pavement. We look for evidence of a life well-lived in external trophies. Yet none of it really proves much of anything. I’ve met three-story houses who are emptier than a local swimming pool in Winter. I’ve met fishermen, with weathered hands and sunburnt noses, who are wealthier in contentment than a banker with a retirement account that could fund a small island.
And here’s where the humor creeps in. Because if you take the human race at face value, we’re a fairly ridiculous species. We invent devices to save time and then use that saved time to invent more devices. We now install apps on our phones to track our steps and then spend hours sitting down scrolling through how many steps we haven’t taken. We rush through meals so we can rush through work so we can rush home and “relax,” only to find ourselves too wired to actually enjoy it.
If an alien anthropologist were to study us, I imagine its report would read something like:
“Our subject species spend 80 years attempting to figure out how to enjoy 80 years. Success rate: questionable.”
Chapter Two: The Gentle Rebellion of Slowing Down
If there’s any real art to just living, it begins with slowing down. And slowing down is its own kind of rebellion. It is the refusal to be hurried into existence, the audacity to say: I will not live my life as though I’m late for a train that never arrives.
Take mornings, for instance. Most people greet the day as though it’s an opponent in the boxing ring. Alarm goes off, adrenaline spikes, and suddenly you’re punching your way through showers, coffee, emails, and traffic. But mornings are not meant for fighting. They’re meant for stretching, yawning, shuffling about in slippers, and standing aimlessly in the kitchen wondering if bread counts as breakfast (it does).
When you slow down, life reveals its details. You can enjoy the warmth of the coffee mug in your hand. Taste, and appreciate, the difference between good butter and nasty, cheap butter. You realize that the neighbor’s dog barks at the mailman every morning at precisely 9:17, as though the dog has been hired by the Post Office as a form of occupational hazard. These little details are where living actually happens, always rushing can bury this awareness.
And it’s funny isn’t it, that we can pay fortunes to travel the world in search of meaning, yet miss it entirely in our own world? Consider these two scenarios.
# “I once spent an afternoon in Fiji talking to a man who owned nothing but a canoe and a couple of coconuts, and he was one of the most peaceful souls I’d ever met.”
# “I once spent an afternoon in a boardroom listening to executives argue over font size on a PowerPoint slide.”
Which of these afternoons was closer to living than the other.
Chapter Three: The Cult of Busyness
Of course, slowing down isn’t fashionable. If you admit to not being busy, people look at you as though you’ve confessed to stealing their garden gnome. Being busy, and stressed from work is our modern badge of honor. Ask anyone how they’re doing, and most will say something to effect of, “Mate, I’ve been flat out like a lizard drinking!” It’s a humblebrag disguised as suffering.
We even compete over it. “You’re busy? Well, I’ve been so busy I haven’t had a proper meal since February.” “Oh, that’s nothing. I’ve been so busy I haven’t seen my children since they were babes-in-arms, and now they’re leaving home.”
What nobody wants to admit is that busyness is often just noise. A kind of frantic filler to avoid the terror of sitting quietly with oneself, risk being bored. Because in that silence, the big questions come up. Who am I? What am I doing here? Have I made good life decisions. Should I finally fix that leaking tap? And heaven forbid we face those.
The art of just living requires courage—the courage to do less, to own less, to expect less. And that can be terrifying in a world that insists that more is always better.
Chapter Four: The Joy of the Ordinary
One of the most overlooked truths about life is that the ordinary is not something to escape from; it is in fact the the marrow of existence. Yet we’ve been tricked into thinking joy lies elsewhere—in exotic vacations, promotions, or Instagram-worthy milestones. Ordinary things are treated as the background music of our lives, when I think they should be thought of as the symphony.
Consider the afternoon cup of tea. Not the fancy ceremonial kind, but the humble, chipped-mug, bag-left-in-too-long sort of tea. To me, that first sip on a quiet afternoon contains more wisdom than a hundred self-help books. It says: here you are, still alive, still capable of enjoying the small quiet moments. Or even consider the laundry—yes, laundry. Pulling warm clothes from the dryer on a cold day is one of those mundane joys that deserves a parade.
Francis Whiting, with her subtle humor, would tell you this: life is not made of grand declarations but of the tiny stitches that hold the day together. A laugh with a stranger. Enjoy the smell of garlic frying in the pan. The squeak of a floorboard you’ve stepped on a thousand times.
Each night my cat prowls over my bunk around two in the morning gently meowing, and half purring. I used to get frustrated and grumpy with him, but now it’s usually a reminder that he’s in my life looking after me, and I should get up and check the anchorage situation,…and maybe get him some treats.
When you start noticing and appreciating the ordinary, it can grow into the extraordinary. The way afternoon sunlight splashes through the trees. The way rain sounds different depending on whether it hits tin, glass, or leaves. The way kitchen aromas drift up from the galley. This is living. Not glamorous, not headline-worthy, but profoundly real.
Chapter Five: Humor as Survival
Let’s not forget the importance of humor in all this. Life, left unjoked about, can become unbearable. Commitments pile up, our body starts to creak, repairs need to be done, and when it’s all said and done, we all end up in the same place (spoiler: it’s in the ground). Without humor, the weight of life could crush us. As the saying goes, “Don’t take life too seriously, you’ll never get out alive.” With humor, even misery becomes tolerable.
Think about how often laughter sneaks into life’s bleakest corners. Hospitals, for example. The sickest wards are often filled with the loudest jokes. Or funerals, where stories of the departed bring both tears and giggles. Humor is how we remind ourselves that while life may not always be under our control, our perspective on it can be, and is good to be cheeky.
Personally, I find the universe has a wicked sense of humor. You finally save enough to buy a reliable car, and the week after, someone invents teleportation. You spend years learning how to cook, and suddenly the doctor tells you to avoid everything that tastes good. Or you carefully plan your future, and then a pigeon decides you’d make an excellent target.
The art of just living is, in part, learning to laugh at these cosmic pranks.
Chapter Six: The Unfinished Masterpiece
Here’s the thing though, no one ever fully masters the art of just living, and maybe that’s the point. If you could graduate a course of “Living 101” with a certificate, it would stop being life and become a program.
Living is messy. It’s full of days when you don’t want to get out of bed, of weeks when nothing goes right, and years that feel like a misprint. It’s also full of wonderful moments that sneak up on you—the kind that makes you laugh at the sheer audacity of being alive at all.
You’re not meant to have it figured out. You’re meant to stumble through, collecting scraps of wisdom, the way a beachcomber collects shells. Some will be broken, some complete, and some sharp enough to cut you, but all of them are proof that you were here, that you walked along the shore of existence and that you paid attention.
Epilogue: Practicing the Art
So how do we practice the art of just living?
Notice the small things. They are part of the bigger picture.
Reject busyness. Wear your free time like a badge of honor.
Laugh often. Especially at yourself.
Be ordinary. It’s the most extraordinary thing you can be.
Don’t take it too seriously. Nobody gets out alive.
In the end, the art of just living is less about achievement and more about surrender. Less about carving life into a masterpiece and more about sitting in the sun, afternoon drinks, and realizing that the masterpiece was here all along.
So sit. Breathe. Watch the cat stretch. Laugh when the toast burns. Smile at the absurdity of it all. You’re not behind. You’re not missing out. You’re not unfinished.
You are practicing the Art of Just Living.
Journey Island Style 