306

The existence or nonexistence of free will permeates almost every aspect of the human condition—except the present.

Toiling to understand the past by finding the true origin of our choices in this unceasing chain of events, or fretting over the future by trying to determine the precise chances of one outcome over the other—these things are irrelevant to the present moment.

If you can do the right thing, right now, then just do it.

305

Making a poor decision was bad enough; dwelling on it and feeling sorry for yourself is only adds insult to injury.

Shame without resolution is the epitome of weakness and the antithesis of courage.

Change yourself, or don’t change yourself.

Just move on.

304

I despise the notion of having regret or having to apologize.

If I could have done otherwise, why wouldn’t I have just done it? I refuse to believe in this fantasyland of retrospect where we fabricate past circumstances far more favorably than they actually were, where we naively misattribute the power of our present selves to our past selves.

An apology is meaningless in and of itself. Sorry is a waste of a word without courage and discernment. They only bear significance to the extent that we take what we have experienced in the past, and learn from it.

303

Philosophy is not a hobby.

Discerning right from wrong is not something we do for fun. We do it because we owe it to ourselves, to the people around us, and the people that have preceded us, to do better.

302

It’s all too easy to judge our past selves unfairly and dismiss our once held beliefs as delusions, as if we were blind, ignorant, and unable to see the truth. No—we saw the truth all too well. Depression, or just intense bouts of sadness, are often not delusions; in fact, the very problem is that in that state, we are too focused on certain truths about our world that make us miserable, so much so that we obstinately refuse to see the truths that can make us joyful.

There are extremely valid reasons to despise yourself, other people, human nature, the abhorrent condition of our society, and the abysmal state of the world. But there are also extremely valid reasons to embrace our blessings, our stories, and our fate that links us all together, to cherish the love and the infinite beauty that abounds on this earth.

We may think that we are seeing things “as they are,” when in reality, it is only as they partially are. The choice of one over the other does not determine right or wrong; it only determines misery or joy.

301

When I was at some of my lowest points in my life, I sometimes had this belief that I was on the frontier of the human condition, investigating the boundaries of meaning, pioneering definitions of belonging or purpose. But the reality was that everything that I had once felt has most certainly been felt before. Disillusionment, betrayal, apathy, disconsolation, uncertainty—they’ve all been discussed ad nauseam for centuries, if not millennia, because they are core parts of the human condition.

300

As much as the notion of a soulmate—someone in this world that is destined for me—captivates me, I understand the world well enough to know that it is often thwarted by circumstance—by who we are compared to everyone else, by our status, by our material possessions, by our physical appearance, by convenience and comfort. It seems as though there’s nothing actually about the interconnection of two souls because of fate, but a cold calculus of compatibility within the human mind.

Perhaps all that’s left to define the significance of what we might define as a soulmate is its direct correlation with its ability to persist against the odds. Perhaps the truth is that the wayward tides of circumstance—the increasingly miniscule chances of connecting with someone at this level, where seemingly the stars must align to create the conditions to engender such an inexplicable, inextricable connection between two minds and two hearts—are the very reason it continues to bear any meaning in the harsh reality of our world.

So if I do find you—after all this time, after all these trials, after all the bouts of heartache and disconsolation, after all this senseless vacillation between apathy and desperation, after all these moments of joy that felt irrevocably incomplete, all amidst the immeasurable vastness of this world we live in—it would all make sense.

299

I like to visualize potential as the endlessly deep wells of knowledge, residing within all of us, that are shrouded by inexperience.

The limiting factor of our potential—the efficacy of our knowledge and our ability to internalize it and influence our every thought and our every action—is often not our access to the knowledge itself; it is experience.

In moments of joy, moments of pain, and everything in between, we must always seek to unshackle our mind from these chains of our past—our preconceptions, our prejudices, and our trauma—to constantly reorient our definitions of right and wrong. Only then can we unlock our potential.

298

For every trial in our lives, what determines our success or failure, and thus subsequent pride or regret, was the daily commitment to preparing ourselves for that moment.

Every step of a run taken,

every gram of iron lifted,

every letter of a sentence written,

inching us ever closer to victory.

297

I have only one true fear—that I won’t ever be able to find you.

While I fear that circumstance may not be on our side, above all, I fear that I won’t be prepared enough. I fear that I won’t be able to be the person you need me to be.

I can hide behind logic, behind bravado, or behind a façade of nonchalance, but I know all too well the ravenous desire, the desperation that wells up in this heart when faced with the prospect of finally finding love.

But so as long as I remember that this is not a war between the mind and the heart, and I can learn to embrace this desire, guiding it along in some way that I can make sense of, I need not worry. Only then, where there is fear, there is also hope. Where there is pain, there is also redemption.