August 2018

Sometimes it may seem like our life’s not headed where we want it to. We want things to go right but things just keep going in another direction. “Where is my life headed,” we then ask. But we might actually be asking the wrong question. Maybe it would be better to ask, “Where am I taking my life?”

The latter question actually suggests that we can take control of our life. Sometimes we tend to trust our lives to fate, living life and just going with the flow. Some of us may live life in the way that society dictates us how to, not realizing that we do have the power to choose and plan where we want to take our life.

Life is short, so they say, so it might be worth our while if we live it in such a way that makes us see and experience the beauty of its complexity and its simplicity, explore its challenges and opportunities.

We can’t simply model our life on someone else’s life or on what others expect our life to be, but we can use it as an inspiration and do something better or different.

We have the power to make our own destiny, we have the power to determine what we want to do with our life. We have the strength to say, “This is my life and this is how I want to live it.”

We go through a number of ups and downs in our life. We tend to only take joy and celebrate the ups, maybe not realizing that there is something to celebrate too with the downs.

FALLING doesn’t mean FAILING. For when we continue to live on and try to find purpose, we haven’t failed. It is a phase, a phase that each of us goes through. We all fall at a certain time in our lives. It could be a big fall or it could be a minor fall. But, really, there are no small or big falls. Rather, only the ones we choose to bounce back from or the ones we allow to consume us.

It is how we react to them that makes a difference. It is how we learn from them that determines the changes we want to make in our lives. Most of the times, we end up surprising ourselves, we are able to do and become our best when we are at our lowest.

Our actions and the wrong choices that we make have consequences. We can’t simply just shrug them off believing that things will just correct itself, that the mess we’ve created will just go away and everything will be okay. But ignoring our mistakes and its repercussions don’t make them disappear, rather, it could even make a mountain out of a molehill.

Difficult as it may be, we have to learn to acknowledge our mistakes before we should even try to set things right. Acceptance is the key. Once we accept that we’ve made some poor decisions in our life, then we can be on the path to forgiveness, change, and a be a better version of ourself.

Why am I here? Why am I alive? Why do I feel like I don’t really exist?

I once was a carefree person. I didn’t want to worry about anything at all, and that means anything; stuff like education, work, money, people, family, friends, God. All I ever cared for was me having fun, doing what I wanted to do without giving consideration to how it would make others feel and the consequences of those actions.

I always believed that things would just fall into place and that the wrong choices I was making would just work out fine later on. I shrugged off responsibilities just as easily as taking off my shirt, and ended up hurting a lot of people along the way. It took me years, decades, to realize that the person I was hurting the most was myself.

Getting hit with that kind of reality, I can’t say is like a slap on the face or getting hit by a car as I’ve never experienced such, and I really hope not, but it hits you really hard. What’s even harder to imagine is how to become a better person than you were yesterday.

How does one change course? How can you just suddenly wake up one day and ask yourself, “What is my purpose? Why am I here?” Every day since that day has become a battle, a constant battle of understanding what is my purpose or what is life’s purpose for me.

It is a surprisingly new chapter in my life, this realization. But it is one that I willfully accept because it has changed me and made me see things beyond myself, beyond my own world and my own imagination.

It is something that I look forward to now, every day. I may not understand yet what my purpose is or why I am alive, but I am now starting to feel glad I am here and I am starting to make better choices that has a positive impact in my life and in other people’s lives.

One thing that I am sure though, we weren’t born by chance, we were born with a purpose.