Everyone knows the slogan: “You only live once—take all you can from life.” Its “progressive” spirit is in the air, unobtrusively present in advertising, boldly proclaimed by management consultants from on high, winking at us from posters and whispering in our ear in difficult moments of self-determination. It claims to be a “wise guideline in life”, a “universal credo”, promising us fullness of being and even happiness. And many of people strive to live accordingly, “to the fullest”. But underneath the shiny wrapper of this popular motto lies a tangle of dangerous half–truths and outright lies, cunningly exploiting human weaknesses and leading us not to prosperity, but to spiritual and physical exhaustion, and in fact—to moral and actual death. What is this veiled manifesto of self-destruction really about?
Hieronymus Bosch (1450–1516). The Garden of Earthly Delights. The central part of the triptych
First and foremost, what does “all you can” mean? The motto deliberately avoids specifics, allowing everybody to put their own, often the most primitive desires into it. It pretends to be universal and profound, but in reality it serves as an empty vessel to be filled with any content. After all, the concept of “all you can” can include “useful” and “harmful”, “dangerous”, “forbidden” and even “someone else’s”. This slogan entails a risky blurring of the fundamental boundaries. Constants such as “good and evil”, “your own and someone else’s”, “useful and harmful” lose their clarity and significance, blending into a faceless mass of what is “accessible”. It does not just ignore the need for moral distinction—it equates the sublime with the base, and the eternal with the temporal, thus putting an equal sign between mutually exclusive concepts.
However, the problem is not only in vague formulations. A morally disoriented person will view this motto as the justification for all his passions and addictions, a legitimate opportunity to follow the path of least effort. For it is not by chance that development, attaining heights in knowledge, creativity, relationships, and even more so in spiritual and moral matters requires Herculean efforts, self-discipline, and the ability to deny yourself small things for the sake of greater ones, and the temporary for the sake of the eternal. This slogan legitimizes the refusal to struggle and grow. “Why work at self-improvement, overcome difficulties, endure limitations or look for depth when you can just ‘take’ what lies on the surface and requires minimal effort?” This is the philosophy of consumerist parasitism that leads to moral and inner emptiness. The passions and vices justified by this slogan do not just take root—they become your masters, slowly killing your personality.
In other words: “If you can’t defeat a passion, let it take over. If you mayn’t, but really want to, then you may.” Such people tolerate no limits, living by the principle, “Take what is yours”, and therefore any “no” is perceived as a challenge. For them the slogan, “Live without limits,” becomes not just a choice, but an ideology legitimizing selfishness.
The consumer society offers endless opportunities for the satisfaction of your desires, while declaring that “I want” automatically justifies “I can”. This paradigm destroys the concept of duty, both towards others and towards yourself. A person ceases to see any value in self-discipline, for the outside world gives him the illusion of freedom through accessibility: any pleasure, relationship, or status—everything can be bought, tried and changed. As they say: “I see a goal—I see no (moral) obstacles.” This interpretation is simpler, more primitive and more accessible. Without suggesting any criteria, this slogan slides down by default to the most utilitarian and destructive interpretation. It substitutes the ideal of development with that of consumption, opening up to a voluptuary the highway to satisfying his passions and turning his life into endless situational pleasures.
Modern culture stimulates this mechanism by declaring moral taboos “archaic”, and their violation—a “natural right”. “I deserve this by right,” a man thinks, stealing what belongs to someone else; “This is my body,” a woman thinks, killing her unborn baby; “I’m just enjoying life to the full!” says somebody who gets dead drunk, cheats on his spouse, steals, neglects his duties, or lies. This slogan makes vice accessible, turns weakness into your philosophy of life, and becomes an approval of unrestrained indulgence of the basest instincts under the guise of joie de vivre. This triggers a vicious circle—the more you succumb to impulses, the weaker your ability to reflect becomes, and the easier it is to justify new violations. In the long run, a life without limits does not become a search for happiness, but an escape from yourself—from your responsibility, the need to choose between what is easy and what is right, and the impending harsh reality in the form of mental and physical diseases.
It’s terrifying to imagine what a person with this attitude, who has a natural inclination to evil, will be capable of. The consequences of the fall are not a metaphor, but an intrinsic attribute of our nature, rooted in the balance between freedom and responsibility. This propensity is manifested in the fact that vicious impulses often seem easier to implement than virtues. Conscience as the “voice of God” is easily suppressed by herd instinct—a person justifies his behavior by arguing that “everyone does it”, “I deserve it”, “it’s not so bad”, “why can others do it, but I can’t?” Isn’t this the principle that guides those who take someone else’s (including unborn babies’) lives, steal other’s property, encourage corruption, declare the institution of marriage “obsolete”, and, in a word, follow the crowd?
So, no wonder that many choose this path: it requires a minimum of effort and responsibility, but totally ignores the fact that genuine freedom is not born from indulgence in passions, but from control over them, ideally in their total defeat.
But can anyone satisfy all passions? The slogan “Take all you can from life” reveals its existential inconsistency at the very first attempt to embody it literally.
We are physically unable to exhaust the capacity of the material world: to buy all technologies, to taste every pleasure, and to possess all goods. This fundamental inability to do more than you can is no coincidence, but a fundamental law of the universe that exposes the pointlessness of the consumerist approach to life.
At the same time, the very desire to “take” is based on a misconception of the fundamental laws of being. The idea that you can take something for free and without any implications is an illusion that is easily sold to those unwilling to think about tomorrow. The idea that life is like a supermarket with free samples is fundamentally wrong. In reality, life is a complex system of balance where every single action has its price and consequences. The spiritual law of the inevitability of well-deserved retribution inexorably confirms this fact. The universal law of the conservation of energy says the same thing. To paraphrase it: nothing appears out of nowhere and disappears into nowhere. Orthodox Christians are familiar with this spiritual law firsthand. If you have fallen into a sin that was earlier unthinkable to you, then you most likely judged your neighbor for this sin. If you steal something, others will take something from you; if you deceive your neighbor, you will be deceived, etc. This is not mysticism: these are the immutable laws of the Creator Who already in this life begins to give every one according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings (Jer. 32:19). You always have to pay, although perhaps with a delay.
The slogan “Take all you can from life” blatantly ignores this law. It suggests focusing on the act of consumption, but keeps silent about the inevitable reckoning. A person can justify himself by “gaining life experience”, “achieving self-fulfillment”, and the “striving for spiritual enrichment.” But what is “taken” out of sinful passion, avarice, or self-indulgence (theft, adultery, lies, and excesses) does not enrich, but rather empties the soul, leaving heaviness, embarrassment, and shame. The pursuit of boundless pleasure, be it endless parties or alcohol abuse, unavoidably writes a “bill” in the most expensive “currency”: a body that has been wearing itself out for years is punished for excesses with chronic illnesses, addictions, and mental deterioration. A similarly devastating reckoning awaits those who seek triumph in ill-gotten power or wealth: for momentary success they have to pay with continual fear for their gains, loneliness and loss of themselves; and living surrounded by flatterers and enemies poisons the soul with hypocrisy and paranoia. The same feeling of profound loneliness haunts those who choose frivolous relations instead of deep attachments, as frequent changes in sexual partners leads to emotional burnout, loss of the ability to truly love, and ultimately to loneliness in the crowd, often aggravated by physical illnesses as a high price for imaginary freedom.
It is obvious that this “hedonist motto” is absolutely alien and hostile to the spirit of the Gospel. The Christian approach to life is diametrically opposed to this. It is not based on thoughtless consumption, but on sober prudence, expressed in the Apostle Paul’s advice: Prove all things; hold fast that which is good (1 Thess. 5:21). This apostolic principle is the key law of spiritual safety. Every Christian is called not to be an indiscriminate consumer, but a wise personality who checks his every step, desire and choice with the criterion: “Is it good for my soul and its salvation? Does it bring me closer to God?” Everything that does not pass this test is cut off regardless of how appealing it may seem. The purpose of life is not to try everything, but to accumulate an imperishable treasury in Heaven, for which a Christian takes from life all that is useful and can serve his eternal gain. The Savior explicitly points out: If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me (Mt. 16:24). This commandment does not deny the value of life, but reveals its deep essence: You truly find yourself through the rejection of your selfish desires. Orthodoxy calls it the feat of self–denial—the conscious denegration of base desires in favor of growing in Christ. After all, the value of life is not measured by the number of bottles drunk, luxury cars or a list of your sexual partners, but by how much you have realized the potential invested in you by God and justified His hopes. Earthly life is not a rough notebook, but a final examination where every mistake has enormous weight and threatens eternal consequences.
Here the main deception of this loud slogan is unmasked. The world insists: “There is only one life—take all you can from it!” Orthodoxy answers: “Insomuch as there is only one life, you should never take all you can from it!” Since there will be no second chance, the price of each choice skyrockets, and responsibility for it becomes critical and soteriological by nature. To waste this unique gift recklessly in pursuit of illusory happiness does not mean to “take everything”, but to lose everything: to lose “the one thing needful” that makes sense in this life—priceless time, a healthy body and immortal soul, and everlasting life with God.
Man loves life. Regardless of their religions, worldviews or ideologies, people love life and cling to it even in the toughest circumstances. But does “to love” mean “to squander, waste, and abuse”? Doesn’t love presuppose such concepts as “value”, “care”, “attention”, and “responsibility”? Upon closer examination, such a popular motto appears not to be a hymn to life, but a slogan of its destruction, entailing the extermination of humanity—both in the moral and physical sense. And it’s not hard to guess who the author of this call is. The phrase, which claims to be a life-affirming manifesto and deep wisdom, turns out to be a symbol of the spiritual impoverishment of the age, a dangerous temptation that covers up the path to the abyss behind a noisy slogan. It does not call for completeness, but for waste; not for joy, but for suffering; not for freedom, but for dependence; and it ultimately ruthlessly reduces precious life time. Awareness of this lie becomes the first step towards true freedom and that real, deep, responsible and creative fullness of being every human being is called to.
In truth, life is only given once: not in order to waste it in pursuit of mirages, but to fill it with a genuine Gospel meaning, creating in yourself what is imperishable and eternal.
