Your life is only wasted in the paradigm where men are supposed to accomplish things through lots of work. This paradigm is very recent in our culture, a couple hundreds of years old at most. I recommend reading for example Alexis de Tocqueville "On Democracy in America", esp. the second tome. He was a Frenchman tasked with travelling the new American republic and later describing it to the French government, in the first XIX century. He saw the nascent paradigm of work and accomplishments through work, as it was emerging in the US. Reading about it could give you some perspective.