Hitting 30 was such a curve ball, one that I could have never predicted at the start of my 20s.
For some obscure reason, I imagined myself getting serious at 28, having already met my life partner, planning some little ones maybe, working on my career, and generally having life figured out for the most part.

Well for a moment It all seemed to be going in that direction, I had a lovely family-oriented girlfriend and a good job with good colleagues.

I could almost touch it. That was it, that was the life that I imagined.

What a naive fool I was. I wanted to be real so bad, that I ignored all the cracks that were surfacing in my relationship, and felt the pressure of the world on my shoulders trying to keep all the pieces together. Until when it inevitably all fell apart.

Needless to say, that was the greatest pain that I felt in a long time, followed by a sense of despair and being lost.

I was following the plan I crafted in my head so many years ago and then lost everything at once.
Without a Plan B, I had no idea where to go from there. While I was having this internal conundrum, the world seemed to be going down the shitter too (and still is, to be honest), with social unrest post covid, wars, and global economic crisis.

In other words a pretty fucked situation.

One sleepless night, I questioned what’s the point of all of it.
Why work so hard, just to be kicked in the nuts when you are just an inch away from it?!

My head went instinctively into all the hardest moments in my life: the tragedies, the bullies, the injustices and all the times I thought it was over for me and I had no one to turn to.

It was trying to tell me something, I could feel it.

And then it hit me.

It’s not over, far from it.

This is another one of those key crossroads of my life, where I could either let the event passively define me or I could once again find the strength to stand up and fight again.

I decided to take a long overdue break. Even when we’re home free, we’re not really free, aren’t we? The thoughts of future endeavors and responsibilities follow us home and pin us down, even when from an outside perspective we are seemingly doing nothing.

Instead of mentally tormenting myself, I thought to myself I would try kindness this time.

But how? I never approached it this way before.

When In the dark, I follow my instinct, and this time it led me to visit my friends who live abroad and whom I haven’t seen in years. Rebuilding relationships helped a lot and I was surprised by how highly they thought of me. that was the first step in the right direction.

I once heard that it’s the worst moments of our lives that define us. We all strive for happiness, but happiness is just a brief celebration of what has been already done, it doesn’t teach us anything new.

Failure, however, is the greatest teacher. It gives us the opportunity to learn and grow if we’re humble enough to embrace it.

it’s better to shatter an imaginary dream and create your own reality than living in the comfort of an illusion, however painful that might be.

Now I know.

And deep down I knew even back then. My inner voice was trying to warn me, only to be drowned out by my logical brain trying to rationalize everything.

I was so busy trying to make everyone in my life happy, that I lost myself in the process.

I forgot all the things I’ve accomplished throughout the years, how I always stood up for my principles despite the world around me constantly trying to get me to compromise, and most importantly, I tried my best on the things that mattered the most.

I lost so much but found the strength that was lying dormant inside of me.

The world is full of gurus and people telling you what to do, but no one has life figured out, and the ones that say they do, are either lying or selling something.

Life is constantly changing and evolving, there is no clear path or constant. The only way is to pick a path and walk the walk.

We may not be able to control the events that happen to us, but we definitely can control how we respond to them.

I thought for change to happen, one would need to resort to drastic measures.
Once I let go of the anxiety about the outcome and started taking small steps in the right direction, I realized how small ordinary things can add up to extraordinary results, like drops or rain feeding a river.

I aim to improve two big aspects of life this year, health (both physical and metal) and relationships this year, broken down into small actionable steps and journaling here as tool to track progress.
Next year I will read this post again and see how far I’ve come.

We’re much stronger than we think, and sometimes we have to remind ourselves of that.