#sot9

The thing that I just can’t seem to be stressing enough right now is that life has a lot of twists and turns, and you’re not really always sure where it’s going to take you. Even the place that I’m at right now, if you described my life to me just a few months ago, I would be surprised! If you described it to me at the very beginning of my first semester, I would have been astonished at how much things will be changing.

Some things felt like good changes, some of them felt like bad ones.

But... the good outweighs the bad. Always.

In the eyes of other people, I’ve either been classified as an optimist, or a realist. And, really, I think I have qualities of both. Because I don't choose to ignore the negative sides of things. The bad is always there, and I can always see it, and I understand the way that it relates to the good. But I choose to be happy about the good (as best as I can), rather than weighed down by the bad.

It seems that the more I’ve experienced life, the more my ideals probably sound “naive” to other people. Because I live by the idea that even if you try your best at something and you still fail... there’s always another path. Another step, something else. Sometimes that path leads to something completely new, and sometimes it loops around to the place you were aiming for in the first place.

I know that some things could go either way when it comes to positive or negative results. But... you have to try. That’s the only thing you can ever really guarantee is that you’ll try. Because if you’re not trying, then what are you doing?

It’s different than succeeding.

I’ve failed at a lot of things. I’ve made some pretty bad sounding music, written some cringe-worthy, cliche stories, made people not feel better about things when I really wanted to, and most certainly, I’ve been behind in a lot of things that I want to achieve. I always have been, actually. I’ve always been told that where I am is exactly where I need to be in, say, classes I’m taking, but I’ve always felt like I should have been doing better, or I could have been doing better.

And, you know, those failures that I experienced... they led me to newer places! Because I kept trying, I ended up being pretty good at making music, and my english teachers loved me and my writing, eventually, and I’ve grown to be so much more open and caring for other people that I can make people feel better about things now. I might still be a bit behind in some things, but I have a few different roads opening up that will help me with that, too!

But, as stereotypically, and irritatingly entrepreneurial as it might sound, I think trying something in the direction that you want to go is always better than doing nothing. Even if it backfires and sends you backwards. Because if you can move one way, you can probably move the opposite way. The idea of being able to do nothing at all, I think, is just an illusion. There are times when you can do more for yourself or others than other times, there’s no doubt about that. Sometimes what you do doesn’t always equate to something tangible to show to other people. 

Sometimes it just depends on your perspective. And I think sometimes that saying gets looked down upon by people as if it’s the way that people choose when their situation is too sad or messed up to actually do anything about it, so they just trick themselves into thinking they’re better than they really are. But the way that people relate themselves to events, and people, and ideas, and even themselves... that comprises their life. So if they change the way they see something, or relate to it, then they’re changing their life!

It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks of the way that you look at your life. My life isn’t perfect. I know that. Holy god, do I know that! It’s been really weird, and hard, and challenging, just lately! But I take all of the things that I enjoy, and the things that I’m proud of, and the things that I look forward to, and treasure, and when I juxtapose them to all of the counterparts that I have to those things... they don’t even compare. Those positive things are the things that I live for.

The things that make me want to keep my life.

Is it possible for those negative things to compare? Absolutely. They might compare evenly to the perspective to another person. An outsider might even look at my life and think that the bad outweighs the good, and that I’ve had a really shit life! But that’s all based on their perspective. I choose to put the importance on the good things. I don’t let them compare even close to equally, because I don't want them to. I won’t ever deny that the bad things exist. But when I die (assuming it’s not in some quick, unexpected accident!), I don't want to be thinking about all of the important / significant things in my life that had shaped me into the person I became, and have those things be bad and negative.

Because if the net attitude and self-perceived experience and value of my life, at the very end, is negative... what was the point of it all! I want to look back and think “yes, those things happened and those really were a collective shame... but you know, all of these other things... let me tell you about those, because those are what really mattered to me!”.

They say life is too short to waste your time doing those things, and yet, so much can happen in a life time. Wouldn’t you want to fit as many of the things that you actively want and enjoy into that timeframe of your life as possible? It feels short because you can never replace things that already happen, but there’s still so much room, it would be a shame to clutter it with bad things.

There’s always going to be bad things, though. There’s no way around that. But you can shrink those bad things down and compact them and set them on a shelf, and save so much more room for all of the giant boxes full of good things, is what I mean. Wouldn’t it be better to do that, rather than the opposite?

Things may not always work out how you planned them. But try to take as much as you can from what might have worked out differently than expected and put it into a giant box of good things, anyway.

You don’t have to be happy all the time. You don’t have to be happy right now. You can be unhappy for a long time! I was! But please don’t ever let that keep you from walking forward, and trying again, and all of those things. Because if you stop doing that... it’s not really your life anymore, because you’ve stopped investing in it! It’s more like being a spectator on yourself, and because nobody is actively trying for anything, you become a kind of pawn of life that just only responds to things. If that makes sense. That’s what I think, anyway.