I’d like to believe that life isn’t a battlefield...

These past days, I have been finding myself in a situation where I cannot explain how I feel. There have been too many questions attacking my sanity. “Who am I, really? What is my mission in life? How do people see me? Do I see myself the same way? What makes me truly happy? What is it to live life? What? When? Where? Why? How?” I am drowning. I am confused. I feel lost. I want to escape.

A lot of times I ask myself, am I in the right place at the right time? I will never know… maybe not yet. I have always believed that living life is about choosing happiness. Thus, every time I felt sad, disappointed, hurt, taken for granted, rejected or anything negative, I shove it down under the rug. I escape. I run away from the pain and from the questions that come with it. ‘Til now, pain and questions sneak in to haunt me.

I always chose the happy life. I believed that I do not deserve to get hurt and feel pain. But I guess I was wrong. It is not to say that I, or anyone else, deserve the pain; it’s just a fact of life that pain is a great teacher and everyone deserves something great. I need to be able to acknowledge that gift. In trying to do so, I have noticed that most of the success stories have a common denominator, challenges- a great possibility of failure.

Failure was always out of the question. It wasn’t welcome in my world. It was something to be kept in the bounds of possibility and never played in reality. I feared it. I didn’t want it. I worked against it. Then I realized, in doing so, I have failed. The lack of appreciation of failure leads me to appreciate life less. Growing up, I was made to believe that I always deserved the best. (Thank you, my uber-loving family). Thus, when things don’t go my way, I easily get disappointed. I easily get hurt. It was my failure.

I fathom that living life isn’t only about the happy times but also the painful times. I learned that just because a smile is easier to look at doesn’t make it more beautiful and more valuable than a teardrop. Things, even people, can be deceiving and our best weapon against it is a huge set of questions.

I’d like to believe that life isn’t a battlefield… but if I am wrong, may I be right to believe that living life well isn’t about the battles won nor the questions answered, but it is about the weapons used, the questions asked and what you become when the fight is over.