239

Hunger and exhaustion are physically based. But being annoyed is a concoction based on expectations and the stories we tell ourselves. We can change the story if we try.

—Seth Godin

The key part is if we try. Rather, if we choose to try.

The disheartening realization is that for many, there is no choice.

238

I dreamt of being in your arms, enveloped in an undeniable warmth in your embrace.

“Nothing feels more right than this,” I thought.

I felt as if all my life had culminated into this moment. I finally felt like some truly understood—understood everything that has made me into who I am, understood every thought that has been conjured up in this strange mind of mine, understood every emotion that’s tormented this ghostly heart, understood how long I’ve yearned for this—and you didn’t have to say a single word. I felt—felt it in my fingers and in my bones—an inexplicable attraction to you, from the love that emanates from your presence, your aura, your soul.

How can this mere figment of my imagination elicit such a momentous revelation? How can it constitute as visceral of a truth as anything else has in my life?

It wasn’t real.

But nothing felt more real.

237

Ashamed? Embarrassed? Why? Should I apologize?

For trying, when far too many of us don’t try hard enough, especially when it matters?

For refusing to hide away in a corner in cowardice?

For wanting to better myself and the people around me?

For assuming responsibility and taking ownership for what happens in the world?

For being who I am?

Recognize the absurdity in these emotions, and move forward with your life.

236

I would rather be condemned for saying something wrong than live with the shame of not saying what needed to be said.

If I was wrong, there is an opportunity for me to learn.

If I was right, there is an opportunity for everyone else to learn.

If I say nothing, all I do is display my lack of courage and awareness.

235

I perpetually underestimate myself, always downplaying how far I’ve come and all that I’ve achieved in this live thus far. I give credit to others, I forgive them, and I love them, even when they don’t deserve it.

It takes a conscious decision for me to take more pride in who I am and in what I do, and to judge others when they need to be judged.

As more time goes on, as I let myself be relegated to a condition of life I can’t thrive in, whether due to my own vices or due to others taking advantage of me, I’m realizing that I need to make this conscious decision more often than I might presume.

234

At times I feel some semblance of shame—some fragment of thought in my mind, afraid that I might be judged for thinking seriously about my life and my actions, and the values I stand for.

The phrase “taking life too seriously” has garnered far too much of a negative connotation in our contemporary conversations; the profligate focus on happiness at the core of the human condition, on the path of least resistance, on blissful ignorance and the self-centeredness that pervades our culture blinds us to the very real suffering endured by countless others in this journey with us on this earth. For them, there is no option but to take life seriously.

No—I don’t want to say sorry later. I don’t want to have to apologize for not doing my due diligence, for not heeding to my calling, for turning my head away at the face of injustice, for succumbing to complacency. I will take life as seriously as I want to. And for as much as I can enjoy it myself, I know very well the day will come when this bubble—this insular and fragile world we live in—will burst.

233

Remember who you were—so you can realize how much you’ve changed in the past.

Remember who you are—to remind yourself to truly live in the moment, is to allow ourselves to constantly change.

Remember who you will be—to inspire yourself towards a change you seek to make, whether in yourself, or in the world.

232

We all make mistakes—none excusable, and none undeserving of criticism.

We make them because there is no other way to explore the unknown, because it is inevitable, because it constitutes all things that we have done, have not done, and have not done right simultaneously.

Just because we learned from a mistake doesn’t necessarily mean that others need to learn from them as well, or that they shouldn’t make the same mistakes we’ve made. A perhaps disturbing theme of the human condition is that history repeats itself because we each need to write our own stories. We find it so difficult to extricate the things and activities within our lives from shortsighted calculations of convenience, from arbitrary valuations of time, and from an absurd quest to maximize our pleasure and minimize suffering, when what really matters to us is meaning, or merely the perception of meaning. Perhaps it doesn’t matter— or rather, perhaps it is the very point—if we make the same mistakes and create different solutions to the same central problems over and over again.

231

Lest I forget that the outcome of my actions is ultimately dependent on the world—for the complexities of this world to resolve themselves.

If I simply do my part—if I simply muster what vigor resides in my heart and in my mind to do what I know is right—there is no need to trouble the soul, to torment it excessively with the vacillations between hope and fear.

After all, what would I still do, if I knew I would fail?

230

”It’s entirely possible that beauty is its own reward."

—Seth Godin