beautiful things

The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It's a very mean and nasty place, and I don't care how tough you are. It will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain't about how hard you hit. It's about how hard you can GET hit and KEEP MOVING FORWARD. How much you can TAKE and KEEP MOVING FORWARD. That's how winning is done. You've gotta be willing to take the hits, and NOT pointing fingers saying you ain't where you want to be because of him, or her, or anybody. Cowards do that and THAT AIN'T YOU. YOU'RE BETTER THAN THAT.

—Rocky Balboa

Things in my suite have been insane, I've been getting slammed with work a lot, school hasn't been going amazingly (and I didn't get much sleep at all this well.). Sometimes I wonder if it's worth it. I wonder what I live for. I wonder if my life's worth living, I wonder if my life's worth living - because I know I'm not living it to my full potential, and I wonder all of that, even though I have my education paid for, a roof over my head (even if there is a lot of ridiculous and unnecessary drama going on under it right now), and decent friends (though there's a lot of drama there too), and I have stressful internships, but at least I'm working and getting experience, and that's more than I can say for so many unemployed people. I have someone who loves me regardless of ALL my faults, of which there are so many. I have so much, and by no means am I ungrateful, and that's when I start to realize that I'm being weak. It's human nature to complain about what we have, and not realize just how much we have. It's human nature to want to point fingers and place blame - elsewhere or at ourselves; even placing the blame on myself doesn't help. Life doesn't work that way; you can't place the blame for the fact that life sucks on anybody. Life does suck. It's no one's fault. Life always sucks. That's when I realize that I, like everybody else on the planet and their human nature, give up too easily. I don't hold on to the amazing willpower that I know I have. I give up and give in too easily, and whenever the going gets tough, I think about how "it shouldn't have to be this way" and how it's so unfair that it is this way, and how I don't deserve this crap from life. Well, nobody deserves the crap they get from life, but we all get the same crap. Life dishes out crap. Life is crap. It's what you make of it that counts. What separates the winners from the losers is the ability to take the crap and FIND the beauty in it, or CREATE the beauty in it. What separates the fittest in the world, from the weakest, is the ability to not crumble under the mental pressure of the weakness and the unfairness of life, and the ability to not crumble under the thought that "I'm just a mere human, wtf am I going to be able to achieve in the world?" - A lot, if you let yourself. That very thought is self-fulfilling - think it, and you'll sabotage yourself and you'll never achieve everything that you can. I've made some unhealthy choices, and I always said I was going to screw up (like everyone expected me to) and die young. Then I questioned why I was working so hard NOW, if I was going to die young anyway. And I reasoned, I should stop working so hard and just give up right now. But the truth is, I DON'T want to give up, nor do I really want to die young. It's just a defense mechanism I use, because I'm so afraid of not living up to my full potential and expectations. But I should make the choices I need to make so that I can live longer (healthier choices, emotionally etc), because I've spent far too long already dreaming and refusing to let myself take the chances I need to to make those dreams a reality. Life sucks, but giving up is weak. Weakness (not to be confused with vulnerability) is one of the most negative attributes in humans, and while I recognize that I might feel that way from time to time, I'm better than that. Being weak is human nature, and people give in to that human nature all the time, and I can't fault people for that. But human nature does not dictate our choices. At least, it doesn't dictate mine anymore. I work so hard so I can be successful, and that's me. I'm not ready to give up, so just because I have thoughts of weakness doesn't mean that life's not worth it at the end. That part of human nature, to give up, give in, stop working, maybe even die rather than live, exists in me, and I acknowledge it, but I refuse to entertain it, and that, I suppose, is what makes all the difference between the strong and the weak in the world. At the end of the day, if I don't keep living, I'll never find out what I could've been, for good or bad, and I'm too curious for that. I've always been hopeful, actually. It's one of my best characteristics. I just need to stop keeping it suppressed in the fear that nothing will come out of that hope and that maybe hoping isn't worth it. I need to just really let my hope flag fly free and keep in mind that there's always a reason to keep going and that giving up means you're not strong enough to ask for help when you need it. Giving up is the easy way, and nothing that's really worth having ever came easy. Life's a privilege, not a birthright, so I guess we don't "deserve" better than the crap we get - not to say that we deserve the crap either, but we as a species should take life for whatever it is, crap or not, because our very existence in the world is a privilege and blessing, not a birthright.

Random thoughts of the day. There's been way too much drama in my life lately, and things have been tough, but I've never been more inspired to keep on working and make things work out and to just adjust my perspective on life as I need to in order to keep going. ...It's been a long week. I can't explain the above without getting into too many personal details, but my suitemate and guy I love and other friends and even school and work have all been involved in some way or another.

Let's just say I've taken a few hits from life lately but I'm back on my feet; it is worth getting back on your feet after a few hits, and I'm ready to keep on walking forward. I'm not ready to die young, I'm not ready to give up, and therefore, I'm not going to.