Life as I know it

Sometimes you realize what it is that you want in life by getting the things you don’t want. Sure almost everyone dreams of getting the perfect job or meeting their prince charming, but what happens once your dreams come true? What happens after “happily ever after”? Maybe that six-figure salary job brings you further away from the most priceless things in life, like family and friends. And maybe that prince charming is anything but that… a prince or charming.

You learn… slowly yet surely. Life is a teacher and we are merely its students. We continue to learn every single day. Some lessons in life teach us the value of a friendship, some that show us the depths of love, and some that give us the meaning of hate. Life never stops teaching us either, because we never stop living.

With living come mistakes; mistakes that lead to a broken heart, a failed investment, a poor grade, or just a really bad hangover. But these mistakes are what makes us and breaks us. If I hadn’t made the mistake of falling in love with a chronically lying cheater, perhaps I wouldn’t be able to appreciate all the mature and honest men I’ve met since then. Perhaps if I had never experienced true sorrow – the kind that leaves you awake at night and makes you want to crawl back into your mother’s womb – then maybe I wouldn’t value true happiness – you know, the kind that makes you smile unknowingly.

Ok I’m only 23 and maybe too young to boast about having life and its quirks all figured out. So I haven’t fought in a war to defend my country, or even taken on the responsibility of raising a child… but the experiences I’ve faced in life have still been monumental in my eyes. Ultimately, what gives people the ability to connect with one and another – regardless of language, location, or religion – is the simple thing called emotions. The anguish a mother feels for giving birth to a stillborn can probably be felt by a person halfway across the world, for losing his/her grandmother. Imagine that: two completely different scenarios. One sheds tears for losing a person they barely had the chance to raise, and one who sheds tears for losing the person they grew up with.

Emotion is essentially the universal language. A smile can express happiness faster than any prose Shakespeare can inscribe, just as a tear can capture more grief than a eulogy can read.

What does all this lead to? I’m not quite sure to tell you honestly. Sometimes there are things that you just have to say – things that make no sense at all to anyone but you. Some that you wanna scream out to the world, and some that remain in the oblivion of a whisper. And some things don’t need to be spoken at all because they just speak for themselves.