Words to Live By
José “Pepe” Mujica died eleven days ago on May 13, 2025. He was 89 years old. The interview below is from the movie Human in 2015 (I’ve modified the translation as shown in the video’s English subtitles a little bit below to try to represent my understanding of the original Spanish a little better):
I am José Mujica. I worked the fields as a farmer to make a living in the first part of my life. Then I dedicated myself to the struggle for change to improve life in my society. And now I am president. And tomorrow, like everyone, I’ll just be a pile of worms and disappear.
I had many setbacks, many injuries, some years in prison. Anyway, the usual stuff for anyone setting out to change the world. Miraculously, I’m still here, and above all, I love life. I hope to present myself for the final journey like someone who goes into a bar and says to the bartender, “This round is on me!”
I stand out because my values and way of life reflect those of the society to which I am honored to belong, and I cling to them. Being the president doesn’t matter. I have thought a lot about that. I spent almost ten years in solitary confinement, in a hole. Plenty of time to think. I spent seven years without one book! That left me time to think. This is what I discovered:
We invented a mountain of superfluous needs, shopping for the new, discarding the old. . . that is wasting our lives! When I buy something, or you do, you’re not paying for it with money. You’re paying with the time for living that you had to spend to earn that money, but with this difference: life is the one thing money can’t buy. Life only passes by. And it’s miserable to waste one’s life losing your freedom.
Either you’re happy with very little, free of all that extra baggage, because you have happiness inside yourself, or you don’t gain anything. I am not advocating poverty. I am advocating simplicity. But since we have invented a consumer society, the economy must constantly grow! If it fails to increase, it’s a tragedy.
We invented a mountain of superfluous needs, shopping for the new, discarding the old. . . that is wasting our lives! When I buy something, or you do, you’re not paying for it with money. You’re paying with the time for living that you had to spend to earn that money, but with this difference: life is the one thing money can’t buy. Life only passes by. And it’s miserable to waste one’s life losing your freedom.
Uruguay is a small country. and we don’t have a presidential jet. We haven’t planned much to have one. From France we decided to buy a very expensive helicopter, a rescue helicopter with surgical facilities that could stay in the middle of the country. Instead of buying a presidential jet, we bought a helicopter that will be posted in the center of Uruguay to save the lives of people injured by accidents, to offer ongoing emergency services. This is such a simple thing! Do you see the dilemma: a presidential jet versus a rescue helicopter to save lives? It always comes down to this. It seems to me to be a question of sober thinking.
I’m not suggesting we go back to living in caves or straw huts. None of that! No, no, that’s not the point. What I do recommend is that we stop wasting resources on useless expenditures, or on luxurious houses that need six servants to maintain. What good is all that? For what? None of that is necessary. We can live much more modestly. We can spend our resources on things that really are important for everyone. That is the real meaning of democracy, and politics has lost this. Because if it meant royal crowns or being feudal barons with clowns blowing trumpets when the master comes riding out to hunt . . . if that’s what it’s all about, we’d be in ancient times. Why did we have revolutions in the name of equality and all the rest? All these presidential mansions have essentially the same idea. In Germany they escorted me with 25 BMW motorcycles and they put me in a Mercdes-Benz with doors that weighed three tons because of the armor. What good is all that? So they tell themselves. Fine.
Human nature is constructed in such a way that you end up learning much more from suffering the from a life of ease. That doesn’t mean I recommend we seek out suffering or anything like that. What I’m trying to say, trying to make people understand is. . . you can always pick yourself up again. It’s simply always worth it to start over, once or a thousand times, as long as you have life. This is the greatest message in life. In other words, you are never defeated until you stop fighting.
I’m a humble man. I take what comes, and I get by, but still, I have to say what I believe. It’s not about a lack of resources. It’s about a failure of governance and politics. Governments worry themselves over who will win the next election, who will be the boss. We fight to control the government and we forget the people and the needs of the world. It’s not an ecological crisis, it’s a political crisis. We have reached a stage of civilization where we need a global consensus and we are instead looking the other way. We we blinded by chauvinism and nationalism and the power to dominate, most of all by the world’s most powerful countries. They should be leading the way! It’s shameful that in the 25 years since the Kyoto Accords we are dragging our feet to take basic measures. It’s shameful.
Because of this man may well be the the only animal capable of its own destruction. That is the dilemma we face. I only hope I am wrong.
Human nature is constructed in such a way that you end up learning much more from suffering the from a life of ease. That doesn’t mean I recommend we seek out suffering or anything like that. What I’m trying to say, trying to make people understand is. . . you can always pick yourself up again. It’s simply always worth it to start over, once or a thousand times, as long as you have life. This is the greatest message in life. In other words, you are never defeated until you stop fighting. You give up the fight when you give up the dream. And fighting, dreaming. . . going forward with your feet firmly on the ground. . . confronting reality. . . this is what gives sense and meaning to living, to the lives we lead.
You can’t live life when you hold on to and nurse a grudge. You can’t live your life going around in circles. The griefs I have known in life cannot be removed by anyone. No one can take them away. You have to learn to pack up your scars and keep going, looking ahead into the future. If I spend my time licking my wounds I’m not moving forward. To me, life is the road that lies ahead. Tomorrow is what counts.
They tell me and shout out, it’s an old saying, “You must remember the past or you are condemned to repeat it.” But I know how people are. We are the only animal that will stub our toes twenty times on the same pebble! Every generation learns from its own experiences., not from those of others. I don’t idealize humanity. What can be learned from something that happened to someone else!? We only learn from what we experience ourselves! Anyway, that’s how I see it. I don’t have any scores to settle.
This interview in the video captures why he was so beloved around the world. He was a towering figure of humanity, and every word in the interview above is true in the deepest of ways.
To me he is a role model, a person I aspire to learn from and emulate. His death and these words in part prompted me to create this site.