For God knows I’ve been worshiping at the altar of hustle to reach my productivity nirvana. The prime of my life was the ultimate symbol of my exploration stage—meeting diverse kinds of people (apologetically, the same kind of people in distinct physical bodies), traversing a host of many places, trying new different things, committing to reams of unknowns, ultimately getting into a series of huge emotional mess—where I seemed to have spread myself out too thinly.

True enough, once you hit quarter-century, a couple of truth bombs are coming atcha. Here’s mine (including but not limited to):

  1. Being a horoscope junkie who is captivated by the scientific precepts of astronomy, and who believes that our universe was geocentric; that the lives of human beings and everything on Earth have been influenced by the positions and majestic progressions of celestial bodies—I normally take a sneak peek of a new year just before it issues hints of its arrival in the silly hope that I could perhaps maneuver my course along a particular way. As much as I have adored spontaneity, I have always wanted my decisions to be foolproof  which (warning: this is a hard pill to swallow) is not always going to happen, period

  2. What once seemed novel becomes the norm. While I’m fully aware of the basic rule in which everything I want in life has a price attached to it—sometimes it has to do with scratching the surface of my savings accounts—my primitive ego seeks to satiate itself with anything exciting that rocked along. Full disclosure: New things were exciting to me at first. But then, eventually, I adapt to them as they became part of my mundane day-to-day life. When it dawned on me, I settled within myself that I need to choose my “future norm” wisely.

  3. Your mind is the real battlefield. Regardless whether you’re an introvert, extrovert, ambivert, or a covivert (cf. ‘Covivert’ Personality Type Excels in Isolation, Psychology Experts Share. https://designtaxi.com/news/409952/Covivert-Personality-Type-Excels-In-Isolation-Psychology-Experts-Share), nobody’s exempt from having a firsthand experience of dark times (and super dark times). To begin with, everyone is entitled to feel gloomy and acknowledge his pain as a way of acknowledging himself. It occurred to me that I should always further the realm because everyone is leading an absolutely unique kind of life; that whatever I see on the surface is not life but only a representation of other people’s lives.

  4. Everything that I have achieved is based on the goodness and grace of my Supreme Being—that I have to exert myself so as to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving. My good works do not buy God’s love; my life is just an expression of gratitude for what He has already done in me.

  5. Real happiness resides not in pleasures, possessions, and not in outward success for they have always seemed contemptible—that I must place higher premium on relationships than rewards, and value “we” over “me”.

  6. For me to be able to go to navigate life, I’ve got to cultivate my circle and surround myself with people who love me, believe in me and in the things which I am passionate about, and stick with me through thick and thin.

  7. We can fall in love only once with our heart still whole. But keep loving, even if it has already been marred.

Easier said than done. What is not? I am a human-being-full-of-frailties times twenty-six years (as at this writing) and will probably commit a balk every once in a while. Taking advantage of hindsight, I learned that the aim of life is not perfection but progress.