When Life Gives You Lemons

It starts and ends with us.

 

Life moves pretty fast if you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. (Ferris Bueller)

Life is like a comedy from afar and a tragedy for those who see it closely. We have to live our lives as if we are seeing them from a distance because most of our sorrows arise from the burdens, responsibilities, and guilt we place upon ourselves. But is there ever a definite moment when a person truly grows or becomes responsible? Who knows that I am learning each day, and so are others? The moment I grasp something new, another dilemma rises before me like a wall, and the cycle of learning begins again.

Everything is the first for me—losing my one and only father, leaving my family for studies, being called the breadwinner—yet, I occasionally don't know how to react at certain moments, and I am still learning how to cope with that. Periodically, I embarrassed myself in front of others, and that also made me mature than the previous. Human nature is complex, difficult to understand, yet easy to perceive. I know these statements contradict each other, but so do their natures. 

From time to time, we want things in life that we claim not to want, yet our hearts still desire for them. For instance, being children, we want to grow old, but when we do, we wish to turn time back and become children again. We confide ourselves in the cycle of desires and regrets, where we seldom appreciate what we have in the present until it becomes a memory.

The happiness we seek in material things often lies right before us, in the moments and people we take for granted. A perfectly fine day can be ruined by our own mood, pessimism, or sorrow with burdens we refuse to let go of without any cause, as a cloud of curse. Perhaps the secret to contentment is not in chasing what was or what could be, but in embracing what is. And that is how life goes on. 

Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift; that is why it is called present. (Grand Master Oogway)

That's the cruelty of life, it doesn't stop for anybody, whether it's good days or bad, they always go by wind, slipping through our fingers before we realize they’re gone. Even 100 years pass by like nothing. It still felt like yesterday when I was a toddling child who used to sleep in my mother's lap, and now an adult who is a rebel at home, who talks about the rights of children while arguing with my mother (For instance you can’t slap me mom, i am adult now, i have my rights too…). Isn't it something funny? If you are not smiling, then you should, because we are all rebellious with our parents in our own way. No matter how much we grow, in the eyes of our parents, we are still the little ones who toddle and cry out with rivers of tears when starving.

However, one of the harsh realities of being an adult is that we lose our childhood innocence with every step we take towards adolescence. Every child perceives life differently as they face the harsh circumstances in the process of becoming an adult, some fail to put their trust in others because people are not good out there, some lose trust in love after multiple rejections, some lose hope, dignity, and shame, etc. still paradoxically some people trust other blindly, love unconditionally, and have hope or faith either in others, and that how life changes the perception of people with the experiences they perceives. All I want is to live a life that my younger version is not ashamed of.  

Once I have read it somewhere:

The unmarried wish to be married, while the married ones are thinking of divorce, the young want to grow old, while the old wish they could turn back time. The unknown wants fame, while the famous want privacy. The poor want to become rich, while the rich wish for the things they lost chasing wealth. The grass will always seem greener, but nothing grows without watering what's already yours. The truth is… No one has it all, but everyone has enough… If only they stopped and took a moment to see it.

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