Performed by Khánh Ly, Composed by Trịnh Công Sơn.

I catch the faint sound of Mưa Hồng by Trịnh Công Sơn floating somewhere in the background. Romantic, sure. But it also pulls me gently into that slow, lingering sadness that sits with the heart of a young man but old in spirit. Day after day. Like silent background noise in your soul.

I once heard someone say, “Live today like it’s your last.” Sweet line. Lost youth love it. But let’s face it. You don’t live that way. I don’t either. Because deep down, all of us buy into the same fantasy. That time’s endless. That tomorrow will just show up like clockwork. That chances are patient and will wait for us forever.

Then there’s that trendy slogan people like to throw around, “You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.”

Right.

But what the hell does doing it right mean?

Who gets to define that? Society? God? Idol of the youth or the elderly? Your parents? Who knows, also likely.

Can you define it for yourself?

And what’s enough anyway? Enough love? Enough success? Enough what? You don’t know. I don’t know. Because you, me, all of us, we’re wired for hunger, sleepiness, the desire to make love, the pursuit of happiness. Bottomless. Insatiable. Just a bunch of pretty little creatures chasing a bright future and calling it purpose.

I only sound bold, that’s all. The truth is, after writing all this with that couldn’t-care-less tone, I still have to keep living. It’s just survival, really. Something inside keeps pushing me to keep trying, little by little, so that each moment becomes worth something in its own personal way.

Life long or short?

This question, perhaps, is one of the dumbest things to ask when you’re knee-deep in the mud of life.

Marcus Aurelius, the stoic emperor of the Roman Empire, once wrote in Meditations:

It doesn’t matter how long a man lives, but how he lives through those years.

So counting life by years is painfully shallow. Some burn bright at twenty and leave behind a flame. Others drag themselves through an entire lifetime without ever being themselves.

Life is long…

Life stretches when it’s filled with boredom, repetition, the dull ache of days that blur into each other. Everything is a copy of a copy of a copy. We count time in hours clocked at work, in salaries that look good on paper but taste like cardboard. We eat three meals, smile politely, get a solid eight hours of sleep, and somehow still feel like we’ve never actually lived. Because life, real life, doesn’t move by the clock. It stretches in the moments that break the pattern. A sudden desire. A trip we didn’t plan. A truth we dared to speak. A love we didn’t overthink. And in those flashes, life expands. It breathes. It becomes real.

Ah, I almost forgot. Life isn’t just about wild impulses. If it were, it’d be far too easy. Sometimes, it leans on discipline too.

I, like some people, often romanticize spontaneity, the sudden sparks, the beautiful accident, the fleeting glimpses of meaning that arrive without warning. But I’ve gradually learned that plans and habits, when held with deep awareness and care, can be just as meaningful. A plan isn’t empty if it’s shaped by love. When we give our full presence to the things we choose to repeat, whether it’s a morning ritual, a weekly walk, or simply showing up, they begin to transcend their form. They become more than routine. They become quiet affirmations of who we are and what we care about. Not just moments that pass but moments that stay because we asked them to. I call these intentional moments that linger, stretched across time not by chance but by will.

So, stop counting time by seconds.

Start counting by breaths.

One breath. Then another.

Because if you do, you’ll realize life is longer than you thought. It’s not just a chain of dates. It’s a million quiet inhales, unnoticed exhales, moments that passed without announcement but held something real. The silence before a word. The pause between two people. The weight in your chest when no one’s watching. Try it. And think about this with every breath. Time doesn’t only stretch when we’re waiting or bored. It stretches when we’re present. When we actually feel the weight of being alive. The air feels thicker. The minutes hold more. And suddenly, even the smallest moment leaves a mark.

Life becomes meaningful to those who are there for it, for the joys, anger, love and hate.

One deep breath can hold a whole universe if you’re paying attention.

Happiness or sorrow — we go through them and they leave a taste behind. Everyone has their ups and downs. Do what you want. Do what you like. And do what you do. Live each moment and actually enjoy it. A long life isn’t just about going through birth, aging, sickness, and death. It’s when, looking back, you know there were days you lived fully and truly.

But also short…

But life’s short too. Not just in years or numbers but in the way it quietly slips past when we’re not looking. One moment we’re reaching for something, the next it’s already behind us. We lose hours to distractions, weeks to routines, months to obligations we never questioned. We wait for the right time to speak, to act, to feel something real, and by the time we’re ready, the moment’s already gone.

Yeah, life short. It passed without return.

Because we blink and whole seasons pass. Because people leave, and sometimes they don’t get to say goodbye. At the time I’m writing this, I’m still young — that kind of youth filled with dreams and ambition, always carrying a strange energy for everything, even when I feel exhausted. But I’ve already experienced what it’s like to watch friends my age leave this world without warning. Too many of them. Enough to make me wonder aloud if others my age go through the same thing — watching people who shared the same youth quietly vanish for all kinds of reasons. That’s how short life can be, how fragile it is. Because the laws of nature don’t care whether we’re ready or not. They’ll take life away even when we believe we’re not supposed to go just yet. We have to accept it, what else can we do?

It’s short in the way a dream ends just when it starts to feel real. Short because moments don’t wait for us to be ready. Short because time doesn’t ask for permission.

Life doesn’t shout when it moves. It just moves. Softly. Constantly. And if we’re not awake for it, it’s easy to miss. Easy to think we have more time. But there’s no warning bell. No sign that says “Now is it.” So while you’re here, do the thing. Say what you mean. Go where your heart pulls you. Love without calculating. Feel without apology. Be as alive as you can while you still have breath in your lungs and a pulse that says yes, you’re still in the game. Because when it ends, it ends. Not dramatically, not always with a bang, but sometimes just with silence. And you’ll want to know you showed up for your own life.

So sure, breathe deep. Still have to breathe. Live slow. Stretch every second.

But don’t waste it. Don’t wait for the right time.

It never comes dressed in certainty.

No space for dreaming, so here’s to reality.

Whether life is short or long, we still continue to live. Right, everyone?

And yet it moves.

— Galileo Galilei

The Solar System keeps racing forward, dragging Earth along its endless voyage through the Milky Way, inside a universe expanding faster than its own age. Nothing stands still — how could we? Everything changes, and so must we, adapting moment by moment, breath by breath. We don’t need to act in the name of greatness. Just feel it. Just move. Just do it. There is no perfect time like now.

Is our life destiny or our choice?

If fate truly exists, if it has carefully mapped out our every move so we can slowly recognize and digest each lesson until death gently waves us goodbye, then still, I will never accept being dependent. I will fight, without question, until my very last breath, just so I can be free to do what I want — whether what I want changes over time, or contradicts itself entirely. Because believing in fate is one thing, letting yourself drift with the current is another. If the wind comes and caresses me, softly nudging me in some direction that life seems to suggest, I will simply respond, “I love that, I really do, now thank you, but please set me down so I can walk my own path.”

I think life is a bit like an untended garden. Weeds grow from the corners we least expect, and sometimes the most beautiful flowers bloom from dry, cracked soil we nearly walked past. We grow up within frames drawn for us, like vines told they must cling to trellises to be seen as “growing.” But I want to be a wild shrub, clinging to the edge of a cliff, needing no one to water me, no one to praise me, just knowing I am alive and that’s enough.

Life is not always clear. Sometimes it’s just a thin strip of afternoon light cutting through a dusty window — not warm enough to hold you, but enough to make you pause for a second and feel your heart settle. I don’t believe there’s such a thing as the right path. There’s only the path you’re willing to walk. And even if your feet are scraped and your heart wavers, every step is still a moment truly lived.

Sometimes we suddenly stop at a crossroads, look up at the vast sky, and wonder if the winds that brought us here were arranged by fate, or if we ourselves set sail to go there?

As the philosopher Epictetus once said:

It’s not things themselves that trouble us, but our judgments about them.

Whether we choose or are chosen, perhaps it all springs from how we perceive and the attitude of our soul.

There are people who live as if they’re acting in a play written about their own lives. Sometimes they wear masks, sometimes it’s makeup layered in bright colors to hide what’s really going on inside. Other times, they don’t bother hiding at all. In the end, they’re pretty good actors, really. Living as though fate has already written the script, yet also juggling a thousand choices about who they want to become. An actor on stage has to follow the script, but there are moments when they break into their own song, unscripted, though the director may frown in disapproval. And maybe that’s what it means to be human. We shine in our own colorful lives.

As Shakespeare had Hamlet muse:

“To be, or not to be, that is the question.”
(Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them.)

— Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1

Life isn’t entirely in the hands of fate, and it’s not fully in ours either. But everything still comes down to us, whether we truly have the power or the right or not. I exist. You exist. That alone is a miracle. Creation. The Creator. And who dares deny that the Creator is supposed to be us.

We’re all responsible for what we do. That’s the price of freedom. I raise my hand because I want to. I smile at you because I choose to. I feel shitty because I let myself. I use violence because I decide to. I closed my eyes because I really felt it. I forget I’m responsible for myself, but that doesn’t make it any less true. I used to think running away was some kind of dream. But the truth is, everything is beautiful. You just have to actually pay attention, really look, really feel. I’m serious. In the end, everything just is. A face is just a face. A man is just a man. A woman is just a woman. A universe would still function without you and me. And life? Life is just life. That’s life.

Is the voice within and death the final form of life?

They are. Because what’s more honest than the sound of your own soul echoing back at you in the quiet? And what’s freer than the moment when all weights — guilt, shame, dreams left undone — finally fall away?

We spend our lives running, building, chasing things that fade the moment we touch them. But deep down, it’s not about the finish line. It’s about whether we heard ourselves along the way. Whether we dared to stop. To feel. To choose. To burn, for a second, with something real.

So freedom isn’t out there. It’s in here, in the voice we keep silencing, and the silence we fear at the end. When death comes, it doesn’t take us. It sets us down gently and whispers, “You’re done now. You lived.” Death, give this noun another place to express itself.

If tomorrow were the last day…

It seems I’ve come to hold a gentler view of the saying, “Live today like it’s your last.”

I used to think it was dramatic, something people said to justify reckless choices, spontaneous getaways, or sudden declarations of love that disappeared by morning. It felt too loud, too desperate, like a slogan stamped on a T-shirt or whispered in self-help seminars. But now, I see it differently. More clearly.

It’s not an invitation to fear the end. It’s an invitation to stop waiting for life to begin.

It’s not about the rightness or wrongness of each decision. It’s about being here. Really here. In this breath. In this look. In this second you’ll never get back. It’s about knowing what you are doing. Saying “thank you” and meaning it. Looking someone in the eyes and actually seeing them. Hold your own hand when the world doesn’t.

To live today like it’s your last isn’t to rush. It’s to slow down. To feel. To notice. To choose — again and again — what matters to you, even if it’s small. Especially if it’s small.

Because one day, that sunrise really won’t come. And if you knew that, truly knew it, what would you do differently?

The answer isn’t big or poetic. Maybe it’s just: I’d still make coffee. I’d still meet my friend. I’d still listen to that old song again, just to feel what it stirs in me. And then, enough.

Live a life with no regrets…

Because everything has already passed.

That is the quiet truth we often understand too late. The past, no matter how loud or tender or cruel, cannot be touched anymore. It is already gone. It can only be remembered, carried, softened over time. Regret is just a shadow cast by memory, and living is the act of walking forward while it follows us. We don’t need to fix the past. We don’t need to erase anything. We do things for the moment, for the most part, and it’s beautiful that way. We only need to look back with calm eyes, like flipping through old photographs. Some will be blurted, some torn at the edges, some filled with smiles that didn’t last. But they are still ours. They made us.

A life without regret doesn’t mean a flawless life. It means a real one. A life where every choice, whether wise or foolish, became part of the story. Where fear didn’t freeze us forever. Where silence didn’t last too long. Where we allowed ourselves to want things, to fall, to get back up, and to try again.

At the end, we won’t remember every conversation or every goal we set. We will remember the days we felt most alive. The sound of laughter spilling out under the stars. The way the air smelled just before the rain. The quiet comfort of someone’s hand in ours. The pause between words that said more than the words themselves.

We don’t need more time, at least to live just one life. We need more presence. We need more truth. We need more small moments that feel like everything. And we need to stop apologizing for wanting to live a life that matters to us.

This life, with all its peace and chaos, is already enough. And if we live it fully, even once, then that once will be more than enough.