How Should I Live?
This might be the most fundamental question I face.
Lately, I’ve been trying to understand my life by breaking it into parts. It seems to revolve around three things: relationships, self-growth, and academic performance. (For now, I’ve set aside health because it’s exam period.) The problem is that these three are not separate — they are deeply intertwined, and that’s where my confusion begins.
For the past year, I’ve lived a very disciplined life. I gave up games, YouTube, short-form videos, social media, and webtoons. Recently, I even cut out TV and sugary drinks. These choices clearly helped me in many ways.
But then a question appeared:
Am I actually living well? Am I living happily?
As a high school student, academic performance has naturally become my main goal. It’s my duty, my challenge, and my opportunity. When I look at my life from this perspective, something feels strange. The things I’ve given up and the things I pursue — relationships and self-growth — start to look similar.
In fact, the restrained things often bring more immediate pleasure and require less energy. Meanwhile, relationships can bring pain, and the desire to grow often leads to frustration and a sense of inferiority.
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So I begin to wonder:
Are these efforts really helping me?
Or are they slowly exhausting me and pulling me away from happiness?
There is another conflict inside me.
If I truly want to reach a higher level of thinking, I feel that I cannot simply follow society. I should be able to question it — even in ways that people might criticize. Only then can I step outside of it and see it clearly.
But at the same time, I still want something very human.
I want to be loved.
I want to be accepted.
So I find myself caught between two forces:
the desire to think freely, and the desire to belong.
And somewhere between those two, I am still trying to answer one question:
How should I live?
