you only die once
we hear it often—you only live once—that rallying cry of the impulsive, the wild-hearted, the dreamers who leap before looking. it’s a motto that urges you to take risks, to seize the day, to live so fully that regret can’t catch up. but what if the better truth is not that you only live once, but rather that you only die once?
there’s a subtle but powerful shift in this framing. you only live once puts the emphasis on moments of thrill and urgency, often romanticized as spontaneity. it’s about grabbing a ticket to paris on a whim, quitting your job for a startup idea, or saying yes to reckless love. but you only die once—that carries a quieter, graver tone. it suggests that while life is full of countless choices, setbacks, and rebirths, death comes only once. one finale. one silence. one curtain call. and so, what will you do with your many lives before your one death?
to say you only die once is to accept mortality with your eyes wide open. it’s not about ignoring death or romanticizing it, but recognizing it as the great equalizer, the ever-present boundary to our days. it is a truth that does not scream but settles in your bones. it whispers, “you will not be here forever.” and suddenly, the question changes—not “what will thrill me right now?” but “what will matter when i reach the end?”
you only live once can feel reckless. you only die once feels reflective.
because let’s be honest—we live many times. are we really living once, like the phrase suggests? we are not one unchanging self coasting on a single arc. we outgrow skins. we shed names and beliefs. the person you were at 10 is not the person you are at 20, or 40. you’ve lived through heartbreak, joy, transformation, grief, and growth. we live and die many little lives in one lifetime. but the final death—that one is non-negotiable.
so perhaps the truest courage is not in living like you’re on a ticking clock, but in living like you want your one death to be a peaceful one. not peaceful in the sense of soft music and hospital beds, but peaceful in that you lived the kind of life that didn’t leave you gasping for one more try.
in a world that rewards hustle, overthinking, and fear of failure, you only die once gives us permission to slow down. it tells us not to fear living “wrong” or to measure life by its highlights. it reminds us that permanence is a myth. that the job we lost, the relationship that ended, the version of us we abandoned—none of it is the end. we get to start over. we get to try again.
but death? that’s one take. one exit. which makes every little life we live in the meantime count. not in terms of productivity, not in terms of legacy even, but in terms of meaning. you only die once asks: are you living in a way that feels like you? not the you people expect, not the you your past self would’ve approved of, but the you that exists now?
this shift also removes the pressure of perfection. because if you only live once, every mistake feels monumental. but if you only die once, you start to understand that life is fluid, and making mistakes is a privilege of the living. the only real tragedy is not the wrong turn—it’s never turning back, never choosing again.
this mindset changes how we view relationships, too. you only live once might push you to hold on tightly, to chase moments and ignore consequences. you only die once makes you ask whether this relationship nourishes you, or whether it’s slowly starving you of your light. it encourages forgiveness, because holding onto anger begins to feel like borrowing time from a life that doesn’t have any to waste.
it asks you to love deliberately, not desperately.
it tells you to check in on your friends—not just because you’re afraid of losing them, but because their life, like yours, is a singular masterpiece in progress. and it deserves to be witnessed.
in facing death, we learn to live. not out of panic, but out of reverence. you only die once doesn’t demand that you make every day epic. it just invites you to make it real. you don't need to climb everest. maybe you just need to say what you mean more often. maybe you need to leave the party a little earlier to spend time with your grandmother. maybe you need to listen to the quiet voice inside you instead of the roar of everyone else's expectations.
it’s not about bucket lists. it’s about soul lists.
and what’s on your soul list? what are the things you don’t want to die having never said? whose hand do you want to hold again? what part of yourself are you tired of abandoning?
because at the end, when the noise fades and the applause dies down, you don’t get to redo it. you don’t get to bargain for a second ending. so maybe you can mess up a thousand times, and that’s okay. just don’t mess up the one death by realizing too late that you were too afraid to live.
we often say, “life is short.” but it’s also wide. expansive. a canvas with room for many colors. and the only limit is that one final dot—the full stop.
so yes, you only live once. but more truthfully, you only die once. and that one death—let it be preceded by a life that was honest. messy, sure. imperfect, always. but yours.
let your death, when it comes, find you living. not just surviving. not just performing. living.
fully. quietly. fiercely. in your own skin. on your own terms.
because you only die once.
so don’t waste your many lives pretending.
a/n:
this post has been inspired by shayan’s piece: still, the sky leaks light. i implore you to read it when you get the chance. some parts of this post have been repurposed and heavily edited to fit the theme; they were initially for different posts that i couldn’t make long enough to post, so i just ended up using the thoughts in this piece and made it cohesive. hope you liked reading it!
This is so raw and beautiful and changed my brain’s chemistry. Thank you.
abhinav thank you for combatting YOLO, do it for the plot culture in the most eloquent manner i've seen.