1. About Life— A Collection of Thoughts
Life is unpredictable, exceptionally so.
Each beginning is entirely unexpected, and every life follows its unknown flow despite its uncertainty, making it impossible to predict the right time for anything.
Initially, I hated this idea. I despised it with a passion that had me choking on my own flaws and weaknesses.
I believed the best way to live was by observing others and learning from their mistakes — waiting patiently for the right time.
I truly believed it was possible for me, and anyone else, to avoid making mistakes as much as possible, for quite some time.
Like a video game, I wanted to keep restarting until I cracked the code and achieved perfection. Yet, time was starting to slip through my fingers, and before I knew it, I wasn’t a kid anymore.
We can’t stop time, and as kids, we don’t notice it, but we age day after day: our hair gets longer, our faces change shape, and our voices mutate. So, while playing and restarting my favorite video games in a childish attempt to achieve the perfect run, I grew up.
We grew up.
I couldn’t restart my life.
My good and bad habits, my fears and delights — I would never be able to erase them from my past, bringing me to a new understanding of what I’ve done to the temple that my body represents and what I have to do to take my life in the direction I want.
Life isn’t meant to be a series of constant successes; this I am still learning (trying to, at least). We can’t ace it by merely watching others.
There is no way to ace it at all, really.
Life is a mix of joy and pain, a continuous attempt to catch its tail in a circle.
Joy and pain, success and failure — all are necessary to create the chaotic balance that humanity navigates, either preserving or destroying it with free will. And no matter what we do or how society changes, we will keep trying to beat life at its own game — at least, that is what I’ve tried to do for some time. Imagine me humbled when I started to understand that I was set to fail from the start — yet, it gives me closure knowing that there are others out there living my same turmoil.
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Unbeknownst to me, I did manage to make quite a mess: by living in a bubble, striving for perfection, and constantly starting over, I lost track and inadvertently caused more harm than good to myself and those around me. I sought my perfect, immaculate balance but later realized I was so tiny compared to the mysteries of life that it would require an eternity to find the right way of living. But is there a right way to live? Have I truly been living my life to the fullest, or have I been just a bystander?
In pondering these questions, I began to understand that life is not about finding the perfect path but about experiencing the journey and discovering what suits you best. It hurts to have gained this knowledge only now, after so much time, but it’s a process I have to embrace all the same.
I have time to embrace chaos.
I have time to reinvent myself, to experiment.
You have time to do so.
I started looking back at my past and picking up on every little detail, analyzing many important triggers I’ve never noticed before, and every bigger mistake I’ve made by simply trying not to make any — there is so much I can learn from hindsight.
I believe that even my self-sabotaging attitude has been giving way to a more proactive approach, willingly, as if it were second nature.
Perhaps I am adapting to this newfound knowledge because, to put it simply, as a living creature, once you understand that you can only explore life, instead of defeating it, you are bound to fall in the flow of it.
The many “what if I fail” thoughts that have filled my head are slowly turning into “what if I succeed” — it puts everything into a different perspective, a perspective that still manages to amaze me day after day.
Over time, I came to believe that the only way to live purposefully is by accepting that it’s not in human nature to have no stain on our soul.
We are just humans, after all, and our lives have the potential to lead us anywhere and everywhere if we’re willing to live them more intentionally.
There is solace in chaos, this I know.
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