313

Self-awareness is not the difference between freedom or oppression from our circumstances.

It only determines whether you enjoy the ride or dread it; it does not determine the ride itself.

312

In our quest for meaning, we almost never need to search for suffering simply because of the ways in which the world and our minds work.

But when complacency threatens—when we become inured to the status quo, coaxed by a false sense of comfort and order—let us then ask for chaos.

311

There is always something to say.

But it doesn’t mean you have to say it.

310

They say every snowflake is different—but the blizzard, it covers us all the same.

—Ocean Vuong, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous

309

We speak of wasting time, as if it was a resource that was completely under our control, as if we fully understood every consequences of every event that unfolds thereafter, as if at this very moment we knew for certain what the right thing to do was.

None of this is certain; we will do our best to discern the best thing to do in each moment, but when the world around us begins to fall from our grasp, from our comprehension, just let go, observe, and learn.

308

Consider the most resilient human beings that we know—those that seem capable of weathering any storm in this life, those that remain steadfast and uphold courage where others might fear.

And consider those among us that have fallen—those among us that have fallen into depression yet never found their way out, or worse, those among us that have taken their own lives, if only to stop the torment.

In their lowest moments—moments of utmost desperation, of acute pain and suffering, of seemingly unending misery and grief—there is little that distinguishes those of the latter from those of the former. The desire to succumb, to give up and completely detach from this world, whether in depression or through suicide, and the will to become exceptionally resilient are both achieved by experiencing the same thing.

The only difference? A glimmer of hope, a fragment of lost grace—something intangible, something gifted to us that we never realized was a gift, that pushes us ever so slightly to carry on another day, to put the past behind, to find the untapped power within our souls, to search for a better truth, and a better life. And to bestow that glimmer of hope, to endow that fragment of lost grace to someone in need of it—this is at the very heart of what it means to be compassionate in this world.

It is the only difference between a life lived, and a life lost.

307

If there’s nothing more I can feasibly do for you, and nothing more you can feasibly do for me in this life, then there is no reason to latch onto our association any longer. If I tried, and if you tried, what more is there to do?

No apologies, no regret, no lamentation, no resentment, no second thoughts, and no turning back.

Ruthless? No. Because I owe my compassion, sensitivity, and energy to the things I can actually control—to the things that I am called to do in this world.

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.