Life is a Journey: Prologue

It’s difficult to sum up all the things that had to happen before I got to where I am now. A shooting star that flamed out in high school, high expectations and low yield, self-hate, self-sabotage, identity loss and great loss, turning over a new page, failure, failure, failure, the light at the end of the tunnel, work, work, work, and here I am.

Well, maybe it’s not so difficult to sum up after all. But life in all its details is boring and not easy to follow, so, even I didn’t care to note them down. In retrospect, those are the highlights— the most interesting parts, framed in a narrative that puts me in the best light as the protagonist in the story.

Whoever said the past doesn’t define you, it most certainly does. Different circumstances would’ve made me into someone else. The same circumstances would’ve made someone else into something different. I choose to see how my past defines me, which highlights made the biggest impact. Because while we’re all living within the same world, each leads a different life, one that is observed subjectively.

But loss is loss, pain is pain, and struggle is struggle, no matter who it is inflicted upon or under what circumstances. Our capacities and tolerances vary, but once those limits are tested, emotions become the greatest common denominator. Empathy is what connects us all. It’s what makes our narratives relatable. Because while each of us lives in a different world, we’re all living in the same life, one that is experienced collectively.

Suddenly, summing up becomes difficult again. We live in the same world but lead different lives, and we live in different worlds but share the same life. There is sense in sensibility and vice versa. There is reason in empathy and vice versa. It’s a spectrum and the objective is to find that sweet middle, but definitions are relative. Contradictions coexist within the same thought, but it’s still not a paradox.  You feel what you feel and there are no wrong answers, and life is whatever you make of it. It is as simple as it is complicated.  

But, if life is a series of experiences, or tests with answers unknown, then what other choice do I have than to assume it means whatever I choose it to mean. If being right or wrong will forever be a matter of personal judgment, if whatever is learned will forever be a matter of perspective, then why not spin the story into something I can make sense of?

A journey.