Funny background story first:

My family plays a game called Wahoo. In this game, you get 4 marbles and 1 dice. If you roll a 1 or 6 you can leave your "prison" as I call it. Then you have to make it all the way around the board to your home. You have to get all 4 marbles in your home to win. The catch is, if someone lands in the same hole as your marble, you have to take that marble back to their cell until you roll another 1 or 6. If you get someone or roll a 6, you get another turn. If you win, you yell "WAHOO!" We get very competitive. One day, I was playing with 2 of my brothers and my grandmother. One of my brothers, the oldest of the 3 boys, gets one of my marbles out and starts talking smack about how he's going to destroy me and blah blah blah. And this is what I said, and also the motivational part:

"You cannot destroy me; I'm a phoenix and I will rise from my ashes."

My grandmother LOVED it! Now whenever I feel some crushing weight of defeat I tell myself that this may consume me but I will rise every time I fall. I was 14.

Morning. Putting your pants on one leg at a time like everyone else. The say habits are different than routine. I wonder if that person can look at themselves in the mirror shoulders down.

Writing. My submission landed in my spam folder. I walk away from most social situations thinking: that wasn’t my best work. I ripped that off from a tweet. Elon Musk buys Twitter and I have mustard stains on my pants from a 7-Eleven sandwich.

This isn’t about remorse. It’s about you. I have hope that when I next look in the mirror, I will see myself as a whole, and not as fragments. We are embodiments of our actions. Give your middle finger to everyone else‘s standards, and don’t forget to smile.

Overpowering

sunlight greets me this morning

and I think of You.

All the ways You show Your love,

though I am undeserving.

Life and death are seemingly polar opposites of each other. One is celebrated with joy among the pangs of pain. The other is loathed and shatters entire worlds. But although these concepts seem antithetical to each other, perhaps they really give each other meaning.

Would anything have meaning if our time in this world was eternal? Sure, we could find meaning in seeing the birth of stars pass by each millennia, but would a story with no end have its same taste of success or passion or fervor? Would love be so powerful if it were to last forever? What if meaning is derived not from how long it can last, but rather in how precious it is?

Without darkness, there is not light. With no light, there is no darkness. In trying to sustain the unsustainable and to try to prevent the unpreventable, it rips away the boundaries of what forms the essence of our most meaningful concepts. If such is true, then a meaningful life is captured in not how long it is lived, but how much quality can be found in every second breathed. Death may be the end of all things, but it is the ultimate reminder of what truly matters in life.

So take those risks. Dream a little bigger. Climb a little higher.

Every second matters.

Work hard now so you can live lazy later.

As they say about the game of life:

Level up a bunch so you can beat that bad boss in a hunch.