This is a guest post from my friend Josh, who has recently started a WordPress blog!

So, what is YOLO?

No, not the idiotic you only live once. But rather, more along the lines of “You only live once.”

With only one life, we’re given a plethora of freedom and privileges to make our life what we want it to be. We can decide to be who we want to be, or what we want to do with ourselves. But the thing is, once you make a choice, that’s your choice. Only in very rare cases will such a right as to take back what you had done even be given. That’s the beauty of YOLO: Once you have committed to making a choice, it’s your own unique path, and that’s what will define you in the later years to come.

What we do, and how we plan our lives is largely dependent on what we seek. Maybe it’s just me, but learning to appreciate how we’ve committed to our lives is really how we should live. We have to value what we’re given, and we need to see the big picture.

Because, without this, how are we “living?” Sure, there are such aspects of discussion as “so how does that differ from the “jumping off a cliff for no good reason besides YOLO?”” Let’s look at this in a new, more mathematical and “economical” perspective:

Ultimately, your life is based on weighing pros and cons under your own perception. However, the general consensus is that pros typically supersede these cons.  Anywho, let’s look at the “jumping off a cliff for no good reason” argument:

Pros: You experience something no one has ever experienced. Without jumping off the cliff, you seem mundane, just another person in this vast world of people like you. You’ll receive world-wide attention: If anything, you’ll become a celebrity!

Cons: You could die. That attention you get may be from laughter at you. And you’re not normal in the sense that the media has generally shunned you.

Yes, “swag” YOLO serves to have some form of “remedial” application to people that enjoy striving for ultimate satisfaction by proving to their peers that they are,indeed, special. But what YOLO should mean is enjoying the subtle satisfaction of life, and not looking back when we make our choice on life. How we see things now and decide will ultimately pave the path of our destiny.  YOLO is the ability to realize that, because we live once, we need to appreciate it. I won’t say that your choices are necessarily right or wrong: The only thing I can say is that once you make your choice, stick with it, cause that’s all you can do.