Oscar Wilde: Famous Last Words
"To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all."
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When I first read “To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.” I recognised it. Not as a philosophical idea. As a description of something I had felt, and if I’m honest, something I have done in my life.
Existing. Moving through the days. Busy, responsible, functioning. But not completely alive.
And I think a lot of people feel this privately, even when everything looks fine from the outside.
This newsletter, and my work in general, is starting to focus more on this gap: the one between existing and living. What creates it, what keeps us there, and, most importantly, what actually helps us cross it.
Wilde knew something about this. He was born in Dublin in 1854 and by his forties had become one of the most celebrated writers in the English-speaking world.
He was adored by society, famous for a wit so sharp people collected his sentences like objects. Then it all collapsed. His affair with a young man led to his arrest. He was imprisoned for two years and died in poverty not long after, at just 46. Separated from his children. Exiled from the country that had celebrated him.
A man who lost everything. And who understood, perhaps better than most, what it actually means to waste a life, and what it means not to.
So when he wrote that living is the rarest thing in the world, he wasn’t theorising. He was someone who had felt the full weight of that sentence.
The Strange Drift Into Existence
I don’t think anyone decides to stop living fully. It happens slowly. You postpone things. You choose the safe option. You delay the conversation. You tell yourself you’ll do it later, when things calm down, when the children are older, when work is easier, when the timing is right.
Later becomes next year. Next year becomes someday. Someday becomes never. And then something strange happens. You realise you are very busy maintaining a life you never consciously chose.
This is the unconscious drift Oscar Wilde was pointing to. The difference between existing and living is not usually dramatic. It is subtle. It is made of small decisions, postponed risks, avoided conversations, unlived versions of yourself.
Mortality Changes The Question
This is where mortality enters the conversation in an important way. When we avoid thinking about death, we behave as if time is abundant. As if life will just continue, and therefore there’s no real urgency to make difficult decisions or live differently.
But when you truly remember that your time here is finite, something changes. The question shifts. You stop asking: how do I stay comfortable? And you start asking: how do I actually want to live?
Mortality awareness has a strange effect. It does not make life smaller. It makes it sharper. Clearer. More vivid.
You start noticing the magic in the ordinary things again. A meal with friends. A walk in the evening. Your children laughing in the next room. Sunlight on a wall. A conversation that matters.
Wilde himself, during his time in prison, found a kind of unexpected spiritual depth, writing about his convictions, finding meaning in the place that had taken everything from him. As if the very loss of his comfortable life cracked something open.
Mortality does not make life depressing. It makes life precious.
Existing Versus Being Alive
I’ve been thinking a lot about the difference between existing and being alive.
Existing is mostly about maintaining things. Being alive is about experiencing them.
Existing is about security. Being alive is about presence.
Existing is about avoiding risk. Being alive is about choosing growth, which means stepping out of one’s comfort zone.
Existing is about keeping everything under control. Being alive is about accepting that you never really were in control.
Most people are trying to build a safe life. But the safest life is often the least alive life.
And this is the strange paradox of being human. The things that make us feel most alive often involve uncertainty, change, courage, vulnerability, honesty, and sometimes loss.
Wilde knew this better than most. He was physically weakened, financially ruined, and estranged from his family after his release from prison. And yet the writing he produced from that broken place, the long poem he wrote about his imprisonment, the letters he sent from exile, is some of the most searingly alive work he ever created.
Aliveness does not come from comfort. It comes from engagement with life as it actually is.
The Present Moment Is Where Life Is
One thing mortality makes very clear is that life is not happening in the future.
It is happening now. Not next year. Not when everything is sorted. Not when you finally feel ready, or have enough money, or enough certainty. Now.
This conversation. This season of your life. This body. This family. This ordinary Tuesday.
We spend so much of our lives waiting for life to begin, not realising it already has. And one day we will look back and understand that what we called ‘ordinary’ was actually the whole thing.
A Gentle Question
Oscar Wilde said that living is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all. It’s a brutal sentence in a way. But also a kind one. Because it invites a question rather than delivering a verdict.
Not a big dramatic question. Just a quiet one you might sit with on a walk, or in the car, or lying in bed at night when the house has finally gone still.
Am I really living, or am I mostly existing?
There’s no need to panic if the answer is uncomfortable. Everyone drifts at some point. That is part of being human.
But as long as you are alive, it is never too late to start living more honestly, more courageously, more present to the fact that this life is finite and therefore, if you let yourself feel it… unbelievably precious.
Because in the end, the goal probably isn’t to be successful, or impressive, or efficient.
It’s simply to be fully alive… while you are living.
If this article resonated, please comment, like, re-stack, and share. By supporting this work, and being part of this community, you are helping this vision come true. Thank you.
Live happy,
Hoppy
Tools & Updates
BIG NEWS: I will be rebranding soon to ALIVENESS. What began as Dying to Live With Purpose which spoke more to the mechanism of ‘Mortality Awareness’, has evolved into a bigger idea: Aliveness – living fully in the awareness that one is mortal. I believe this could be as big as Mindfulness, which teaches people how to be present, whereas Aliveness will teach people how to live fully in a finite life.
Visit Tools to explore 15+ self guided exercises designed to reduce anxiety, improve vitality, deepen your sleep, and bring clarity to your relationships, career, and health.
Reverstory: the bespoke AI tool designed to help you identify major life regrets and suggest ideas of how to course correct while you still can. Available to paying subscribers.
The Ultimate Meditation: A guided practice designed to help you slow down, reflect on mortality, and reconnect with a life of no regrets. Many people tell me it helps them discover greater calm, gratitude, and clarity.
I have been invited to perform the mediation at both Connect and Medicine Festivals this summer.
Go deeper: The Powerful Secret That Improves Your Sleep / Carl Jung: Famous Last Words / What Is Purpose?
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