Reflections

Choose Yourself

There’s nothing more invigorating than hearing your sneakers repeatedly pound the pavement. With every step, you become painfully aware of each breath. To have that moment to just be about you, nothing more, nothing less. To finally learn to let go and be content. Content with knowing that you are finally doing something for yourself. For once you are putting yourself in front of others. 

As we grow older, we change. We replace hobbies with reality and we forget about the little things. We start to underestimate just how much those little things actually matter to us and everything becomes a matter of convenience. Rather than see people, we spend our time in solitude in front of the wondrous machine that we call a laptop. We start to forget what it means to focus, to have that determination, that moment when we are just aware of who we are, now that’s powerful. Those are things that can push you through the day. When you start to become active, when you strive to have something more in your life…that’s what brings meaning to it. 

One day you start to realize what really does matter. At the end of it all, you start to remember why you invested time in things. For me, that feeling of sore muscles —- that’s a true feeling of accomplishment. It’s a feeling that you have put yourself first. 

Put yourself first for once and your whole world will be transformed. You will start to realize that maybe the ground that you stood so firmly on is more sand, less pavement. You’ll start to realize that things will be more uncertain in the future than they are now. If you think you have seen enough self-doubt and failure, know that you’ll be working through those issues even more in the future. Stop creating races out of things that just need to be a journey. Perhaps, most importantly, stop striving for greatness. The less you think about it, the more likely you’ll get there. For now, just stop for a second….

Enjoy the beauty that’s around you. Take in those moments with your friends and drink it all in. This won’t all last forever, over year friendships will be broken, romances will fade, things will happen, love with die. But for today…just for today. Breathe. For once, choose yourself.

some days you just need a win.

Part of the reason we hold on to something so tight is because we fear that something so great won’t happen twice in our lifetime. And so that’s why we stay stuck, in neutral, paralyzed by our past and afraid of the future. We act as if the present is the best it’s ever going to be, or not. But things can go either uphill or downhill from here and we would rather not know. Sometimes, we find comfort in just being. 

Then there comes a time in our lives when we stop trying to make things work…when we finally choose our battles instead of letting them choose us. When we decide to let go of the better options for options that work for us. When we finally decide that sometimes you have to pick yourself over others, when you finally make that choice….there’s nothing quite liberating as that. It’s that moment that you decide that nothing else quite matters anymore. That  from here on out, it’s just you and your road - your past, your present, your future.

We hold on to things because we’re afraid that if we let them go, we’ll never get it back. We start to make that one thing our standard of comparison, our base point for all our judgments. Good or bad, we start to fixate on all the flaws, the shortcomings, the times we failed. And failure, failure is important. It teaches us growth, new experiences, a chance to start over. But there’s also a certain beauty to believing in something better. For some of us, it may be the bigger picture. For others, it may be the simple things such as getting through this day.

As for me, it’s all about taking leaps of faith.

Winners

Once in a while, amidst all your bad days, you’ll have a good day. A great day even. Make sure you remember those days. Keep them safely in the pockets of your coat or in a jar on your desk because you need to know that there are and will be better days. You need to remember how on those days you felt all warm inside, like you’ve just drank a hot cup of coffee…like a small fire has ignited inside of you. Hold on to that warmth.

We let each day go by in hopes that tomorrow will be a better day. We keep on looking forward, to the next month,the next year, 5 years, and 10 years down the road. As humans, we are eager to plan ahead, plan everything. And if our life doesn’t come with some sort of agenda, we panic. We don’t know how to react. Life’s best solution —- remember the good times you’ve already had. Take it all in small doses. 

If you ever find the cards stacked against your favor, just remember that winners don’t make excuses when the other side plays the game. You have to change that mentality. Instead of thinking how to lose small, think about how you can win big. Life is a high stakes game, it’s best to take your highest bet.

You live in this sheltered world and you start to believe that you are living. You read a book and go on a trip and you start realizing that you are not living…you’re just hibernating. Eventually you fall into this routine, you start to believe that life just has one track, that you only have one goal. But there are things in this world that are bigger than us. Just remember,

winners don’t make excuses when the other side plays the game. 

Take Another Shot

Life is like a camera. Focus on what’s important and capture the good things, develop from the negative and if things don’t work out, just take another shot. 

With graduation just on the horizon, our time here somehow starts to become more valuable. Rather than firsts, we start realizing it’s more about lasts. We realize that the time we spend right now, with these people, with this mindset, with these lack of responsibilities…this time is all we’re getting. And so we start to hold on to things too tightly, we overcorrect. We start worrying that things won’t work out, that we won’t get into graduate school, that we might not have a clear next step. Up to this point in our lives, we have become so conditioned to keep on focusing on that next level that we haven’t spent that time to just stop, think, and breathe. In the end, it’s not about our lasts, it’s about making the most with our time remaining. 

I think part of the reason why we hold on to something so tightly is because we fear something so great won’t happen twice. We cling to our pasts, to our comfort zones, to the few friends we have known forever, because we are afraid of letting it all go. Great things can happen twice. But as long as we cling so desperately to the past, so long as we try to fix things that will remain broken, we will be stuck. We will be stuck in neutral. And there’s no point in staying neutral, cause you’ll always get the same view. 

At the end of it all, sometimes it can just be about starting new relationships, going on new adventures, or figuratively exploring the unknown. Even if we don’t see at the time, there is a bigger picture to it all. And if things still don’t work out, just take another shot.

Resolutions

Every New Years, we make resolutions. We tell ourselves that starting today, we will become better people, we will change, we make promises we know that we cannot keep. We like to believe that change can happen overnight, that somehow we can move on from our past and leave it behind. It’s our little way of making ourselves feel better  for just a few more days, until we go right back to being the people we once were.

Call me a skeptic, but I find it hard to believe in resolutions. People never change overnight and we cannot escape our past. Our past follows us wherever we go. So how exactly do we change as people when even our simplest efforts for declaration seem futile? It’s pretty easy, think about practical goals. Those that, even though may not metaphorically make us “land among the stars,” are the ones that will get us going. My advice is simple —- find good friends, good company, and things you like to do. Do things that you actually like to do, not things that just conform with societal norms. Branch out and be spontaneous. This is the one time in your life that you can take a chance. Everyone grows old, but it’s time to put actual life in those years. You’re young, what are you waiting for? 

Think twice about your life. Pick your friends closely. These are the people that you will be spending your time with —- time you won’t get back. Think about who is truly worth your time and whose just passing through your life. Start doing things for yourself. Stop putting others above you and for once, pick yourself. It’s your life - so what do you want to do about it. It’s too easy, too comfortable to fall into that trap of ‘going with the flow.’ I would know, I am practically the queen of that territory. At some point, you have to take control of your life and stop letting others make decisions for you. You want something bad enough for yourself and trust me you will find a way to fight for it. It’s like they say —- when there’s a will, there’s a way. And if you can’t find a way, you try hard as hell to find a reason to keep on fighting. Even if things don’t end up the way you had imagined, fight that game on your terms. AT the end, it’s about staying true to yourself. 

Resolutions are for the weak. They are so for those of us that are perfectly fine with changing just one part of our lives. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t undermine the value of resolutions if one have the volition to actually follow through with them. I just don’t believe that they are something that we can fall back on as “acceptable” personal growth. We must look for something deeper than that, which is a change in character. And the fun part of this process, is discovering what you really do and don’t like about yourself and others. Start making choices for yourself. Spend some time and figure out what you want. 

At the end of the day, fight on your terms. 

Photographs

I know that these will all be stories someday, and these pictures will become old photographs. And we’ll all become somebody’s mom or dad. But right now, these moments are not stories. This is happening. I am here. I can see it. This one moment when you’re not a sad story. You are alive. And you stand up and see the lights on the buildings and everything that makes you wonder. And you’re listening to that song on that drive with the people you love most in the world. And in this moment, I swear, we are infinite. 

We have heard it a million times, that the photographs stay the same even if the people in them don’t. Such an obvious statement. Photographs represent a very particular moment in time, a particular lapse of time in which everything is stationary. Against our better judgment, we cling on to those photographs. We use them as a way to remember how we once felt about a person, a thing, a place. But photographs are deceptive. They lead us to believe that it’s healthy to go back, that it’s the right thing to do. 

Life’s always about moving forward. If you’re not moving, then what are you doing? There are only so many times where you can look back and pick up the pieces. At some point, you’ve just got to move on. Even if it means starting over, even if it means doing that one thing you hate most in the world. Perhaps photographs are just are little reminders to keep going forward. They remind us that more than ever we need to live in the present. To enjoy those moments.

At the end of the day, I can’t help but mention that I’m such a sucker for photographs. Despite all of the preaching, photographs act as the pick-me-ups on the worst of days and as comfort even on the best. 

I know that these will all be stories someday, and these pictures will become old photographs. 

But for now, it feels pretty infinite.

One Step Forward.

Why does it feel that for every step we take forward, we seem to take two steps back? When we start to look back on our lives, sometimes it feels like we are still standing in the same place. It’s as if everyone has moved on..and you’re just standing there…waiting for something to happen.

It’s hard to see progress. Moment by moment, day by day, it’s difficult to see just how we’re improving. It seems that for every hurdle we pass there’s a bigger one right ahead. It’s that constant battle to the end, that struggle to face what our biggest fears. Looking back, it feels like we’re still fighting those same things, just in different forms. And while it may seem that those ‘two steps back’ are the worst, maybe they are just what we need.

My friend once told me that you have to know where you have been to know where you’re going. Those two steps back, those are constant reminders of our path. They remind us of the struggles, they remind us about what we are leaving behind. They make us realize what the one step forward really means. So at the end of the day, we can know…that progress —- progress is something that happens slowly, over time. 

As we get older, we realize that it becomes more difficult to recognize the change from the constant. It becomes harder to figure out the finer details, the black from the white, the rights from the wrongs. At the end of the day, all we can hope for is progress. Even if it means two steps backward, keep in mind you’re always taking….

one step forward.

Keep Going.

Breathe in, breathe out. Whatever you do, don’t stop. Feel that rush of adrenaline? Good, keep going. Are your muscles killing you yet? Good, keep going. With every fiber in your being are you still moving forward? Good, keep going.

Running. While it’s not my personal form of fitness, it’s one of the best ones. Despite the fact that I can still only manage to run 4 miles without having the wind knocked out of me, there is something so invigorating about it. Throughout the jog, there’s only one thing on my mind - to finish the run. In those minutes, you become painfully aware about your body. You focus on the breathing, the pace, the adrenaline rushes —- you focus on yourself. For those few minutes, your world can revolve around just you. 

You start to think about your day, life, family, dreams, and all of your aspirations. You think about all of the heart break you’ve endured and you wonder if you can ever be strong again. They say hearts break, but hearts are the toughest of muscles (besides the obvious answer - the masseter). They are constantly pumping throughout your lifetime, 70 times a minute, on and on. Even dreams, the most delicate of things, are remarkably difficult to kill. There’s something to be said about human persistence, that will to overcome all extremes. That will to be keep going.

While it’s always important to finish the run, don’t forget to enjoy the highs and lows that come with it. There’s nothing glorious in the finish line. It’s more about climbing out of those lowest valleys to understand how tall those mountains in your life actually are. Take your highs with your lows. Breathe in, breathe out, let the endorphins do the work. Good, keep going.

Greatness.

           There is so much that can go wrong in a day. 24 hours, 1440 minutes, 86,400 seconds. The clock is always ticking and every second spent worrying is a second you will not get back. You can lose a friend, fail a test, forget a family member’s birthday…you can lose so much in just a second. But this fear of loss, this fear that we are losing our time here on earth, this fear….it does nothing for us. This fear, rather than pushing us to live, paralyzes us. It serves as a reminder that somehow we are inadequate. This fear is the one thing that prevents us from truly living our lives.

            Nelson Mandela once said, “our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.” We are constantly afraid to achieve greatness…but why? Greatness comes with responsibility; it comes with expectations to be something else, some refined and more sophisticated version of oneself. Greatness demands perfection, or rather the perfect versions of us. At the end of the day, we have realize that we are already there, perfect version of us.

            Greatness is not something we aspire to achieve, it is something that we become along our path to bigger things. As for conquering our fears, we take baby steps. Forget giant leaps for mankind, focus on yourself. Life will figure itself out. And just remember, you are anything but inadequate, you are greatness.