Final Thoughts: 2023

As this year comes to a close, I, like many others, find myself looking back at everything that has come my way over the past 365 days. It has been quite a journey, enjoyable at times, and unbearable at others. I have had a lot of free time lately, due to an injury I sustained giving my very best effort to an establishment that will no doubt replace me as soon as it is eligible to do so. This thought had me down as I was out. I thought a lot about life and the symptoms that come with it. For life is an ailment, of which is only temporary. For that, I am thankful. Allow me to elaborate.

Life comes with a list of side effects as long as the Grand Canyon is deep. You find yourself thrust into a slew of misery, grief, disgust, shame, pain, and the paper just keeps on rolling. You look for any way out and all the warning lights start flashing, the bells begin to ring and everyone tells you that it will be alright. All the while, you are the one with your brain stuck in a box that is shaped just like your head. They can’t imagine the pain you feel when your heart is shattered inside a cage that is shaped just like your ribs, and you can’t reach in there to glue the useless contraption back together because your hands just barely don’t fit between the spaces. It truly feels like a game you cannot opt out of, and you are trying to find out who tripped you, while also trying to figure out why there is a knife in your back.

It’s not all thunderstorms and shit shows though. Sometimes the sunlight shines through the window just right, and you take the opportunity to lay there a few more minutes, just admiring the beauty that glows along the valleys and peaks of the popcorn ceiling. Other times it is the laughter over dinner about telling the waiter “you too” after he told you to enjoy your meal, and you share that kiss with your date that stands your hair at attention, while the electric signals in your mind are telling you that this is the moment you know you have forever.

They say you have to take the good with the bad, and it took me a long time to realize what that meant. Without the trials, there would be no victories, and if there was no end, then there would be no motivation to achieve anything. Why do today what you could put off tomorrow? The thing is, tomorrow isn’t always promised, right? So why waste the time that we have? Is there even a point in starting today if it can’t be finished today then? But then again, if you don’t start you will never find the end, and if tomorrow does come, you just pick up where you left off, and if you didn’t find tomorrow in your list of things to do, then at least you can say you tried.

So, to reiterate, I am glad that life is only temporary, because without the motivation of the uncertain, I would certainly be in no rush to accomplish anything, and the small moments would mean less and less, eventually diminishing into complete irrelevancy, and certainly when the inevitable does happen, I can be thankful that life can no longer plague me with its torment. In the meantime though, I intend to seek out the beauty in life and pursue the dreams that I know for certain can become a reality, because I have been there after all, and seeing is believing.

My name is UpL8 and being UpL8 feels Gr8