A few weeks ago, I had a bad work experience from which I am still trying to recover. At first, it seemed like the end, that everything was over. My immediate thoughts were: how am I going to go back next week, and how am I ever going to get over this experience? After some similar irrational thoughts, I managed to get a hold of my emotions and be reasonable, realizing that I would live past this and still have the opportunity to redeem myself.

2016 has been a difficult year for seemingly everyone – from politics and environmental issues to the numerous celebrities who have passed away.

Personally, I myself, have struggled in school and have been unable to achieve all the goals I had originally placed upon myself. The lack of time management skills coupled with difficult classes have brought me down this year, but I have hopes for the future to persevere through any challenges that may come about, regardless of the results.

These are strangely optimistic thoughts for me, but they have arisen with a pessimistic realization that I will not always succeed (not even half the time) and will often inevitably fail. This “philosophy” has been around since I can remember and has been continually preached by teachers and their silly posters that say, “The key to success is failure” or “If you haven’t failed, you haven’t lived”, but these hold an immense amount of truth. There is, however, something these “motivational” posters ignore: handling failure and knowing how to accept the mortification it can cause.

I think the strength it takes to move past failure is an extremely admirable characteristic which goes largely unnoticed. After all, in dark times, it seems so much easier to give up, yet something of immense power manages to prevail. And here we are the next day like the iguana surrounded by snakes who for some reason kept running in a seemingly hopeless situation and for what? To be eaten another day?

There may be something sad about the certainty of failure, but that is what makes us living. It is this fight for surviving despite the challenges which determine our self-worth and how we handle these challenges which determine the force of our fight.

Although I am privileged in my plight and others are not so fortunate, this fight, as I have repeatedly called it, is what gives us the ability to sympathize and relate with others. I may not share the same experiences as everyone else, but I am still able to understand and have compassion for a stranger going through difficult times.

It is a fight we all, and I mean all share. Every living creature on this Earth is part of this fight–to grow and flourish.
This is what links me to everyone.
And this is what makes us no different from a sapling in a dense forest, struggling to find the sun but still reaching for it.