Life Ain’t A Life

“Life ain’t a life..til you live it.”

-Malcolm McCormick aka Mac Miller

There’s going through life and then there’s LIVING life.

Pursuing your authentic life is about living your life, not just going through the motions determined by the influences of others. 

Mac Miller is one of my favorite rappers and his life was unfortunately cut too short at 26, but in his short time, he discovered his reason for living and was wise beyond his years. It’s tragic how his life ended and I can only imagine how his music would have evolved and the messages he would have shared with his fans.

In his song 2009, which is wonderfully analyzed by Cole Cushna on the Dissect podcast, and in the song he encourages listeners to live life as kicks off his first verse,

 “Ok, you got to jump in to swim.”

I take this lyric as an encouragement to jump into the pool of life—you can sit on the side of the pool with your feet in the water to cool off on a hot summer day, but that’s not swimming. No one ever had fun sitting on the side of the pool—the fun happens after jumping in and actually swimming.

Mac’s wisdom for living life wasn’t just contained in his songs; in an interview, he shared insight on how to live authentically (my words not his) after being asked what he would tell his younger Self, Mac said, “Trust. The more I trust in who I am as a human being, the more I’m like, ‘Ok, this will all kind of figure itself out as long as I do what feels natural.’”

…“as long as I do what feels natural.”

I hope you choose to live life, not just go through it…and do it by following what feels natural to you.

Mac Miller performing 2009 on NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert Series (jump to 11:37—I couldn’t embed it at the start of the song).

See you tomorrow and keep pursuing,

JC