Anna M. Stratulat

There is a quiet kind of emptiness that often hides beneath the surface of a “normal” life.

It doesn’t scream. It doesn’t make a scene.

It settles in silently — between routines, behind polite smiles, under layers of responsibility.

It’s the difference between being alive… and truly living.

Many people walk through their days on autopilot.

They wake up, go to work, answer emails, check boxes, scroll, sleep, repeat.

They follow the rhythm they were taught — to be productive, to be efficient, to be good.

But somewhere along the way, they lose touch with the very thing that makes life worth living:

Presence. Emotion. Meaning. Spark.

Survival is the body moving.

Living is the soul dancing.

To live means to feel.

It means allowing joy to shake your chest and sadness to sit beside you without shame.

It means making room for silence, for laughter that erupts without warning, for choices that don’t always make sense on paper but feel right in your bones.

Living is not about perfection.

It’s not a polished timeline or a curated feed.

It’s raw. Messy. Unpredictable. But it’s real.

It’s the kind of existence that leaves you breathless — not because you’re exhausted, but because you’re awake.

People forget that they are allowed to want more.

Not more things, but more life.

More connection. More stillness. More truth.

They forget that being “fine” isn’t the same as being fulfilled.

They forget how much strength it takes to choose themselves —

to say yes to joy,

yes to healing,

yes to living fully, even if it means stepping into the unknown.

Because surviving is safe.

But living — truly living — is a rebellion.

A quiet, sacred act of courage.

And at the heart of it all lies a truth we often ignore:

In this world, it’s more important to live, not just to survive.