You're On Your Own, Kids

In your life, you will inevitably misspeak, trust the wrong person, underreact, overreact, hurt the people who didn't deserve it, overthink, not think at all, self-sabotage, ruin perfectly good moments for yourself and another, deny any wrongdoing, not take the steps to make it right, feel very guilty, let the guilt eat at you, hit rock bottom, finally address the pain you caused, try to do better next time. rinse, repeat. And I'm not gonna lie, these mistakes will cause you to lose things. I'm trying to tell you that losing things doesn't just mean losing. a lot of the time, when we lose things, we gain things too. every choice you make leads to the next choice, which leads to the next, and i know it's hard to know which path to take. There will be times in life where you need to stand up for yourself. Times when the right thing is actually to back down and apologize. times when the right thing is to fight. times when the right thing is to turn and run. times to hold on with all you have. times to let go with grace. Sometimes the right thing to do is to throw out the old school of thought. Sometimes the right thing to do is to sit and listen to the wisdom of those who have come before us. how will you know what the right choice is in these crucial moments? you won't. The scary news is, you're on your own now. But the cool news is, you're on your own now. anyway, hard things will happen to us, we will recover, we will learn from it. we will grow more resilient because of it, and as long as we're fortunate enough to be breathing, we will breathe in, breathe through, breathe deep, and breathe out.