What is survival?

Breathing, eating, sleeping, merely existing.

What is living?

Laughter, weeping, in short, feeling.

How to survive?

Food, shelter, the basic, cold necessities.

How to live?

Empathize, love, and willingly experience both joy and sorrow.

There is not one without the other.

If you exist without one, you exist without the other.

I can survive easily, fending for myself, 

existing forever with no purpose, only length.

Or I can live, stepping into the unexpected,

Risking my comfort for happiness,

Gambling joy with sorrow, hate with love.

Embracing both the bliss and heartache

God has laid out for me,

accepting his guiding hands to mold me through laughter and tears.

I have survived if I have breathed,

But I have lived if I have felt.