Obstacles of life

This is my first blog post. My blog isn’t very specific, like “How to Travel Cheaply” or “Healthy Living.” It’s sort of a mix of interesting life experiences, travel, and lessons learned. My About Me gives some more info. 

There are many people that “know” me, but don’t really know me. I’m sure others can relate to this. It may look like I know what I’m doing, that things go smoothly, but that is far from truth. In just the past 7 months I have been through two surgeries, and all the procedures that followed. At one point in recovering, I felt the lowest I’ve been in my life. Unforeseen events caused me a lot of pain, physical and mental. I was, at times, angry that I had to go through this, especially at such an important time. It was both a blessing and a hardship.

I’d say that most all of us are conditioned to live life a certain way, to follow a certain path. Something that I have been fighting for my whole life is to prove, mostly to myself, that the circumstances of your birth do not determine your destiny. No matter how disadvantaged you are physically, mentally, financially, you have the power to do something remarkable. I personally want to do something remarkable with my life. I want to do something that affects people positively, that causes change. I think most people do.

The most rewarding experiences come from doing things that make you uncomfortable. I have learned that first hand. I used to have bad anxiety and overall felt lost. The daunting task of doing almost anything would stop me in my tracks, and because of that I didn’t get anywhere. There were other factors at play, things that made me different, things that happened that I couldn’t control. But I couldn’t let those things stop me. The moment I began forcing myself to do things I really wanted to do, things that made me nervous, that made me uncomfortable, I began to make great strides in a positive direction. Sometimes you just have to stop overthinking, and do it, even if it seems crazy. People might tell you that you’re crazy, until you do something great and then they will tell you that you’re inspirational.

We all have our own thoughts, experiences, and pain. There is a quote from a man, whose story, though maybe not inspirational to many, was inspirational to me in a certain way. He wrote “Happiness is only real when shared.” I used to think about this a lot. Is this true and what does this even mean? At first glance, one might think this means that we can’t be happy when we are by ourselves. One might even assume that means we need to find someone to share our life with. I think those are just thoughts that barely scratch the surface of the real meaning.

You will meet many people in your life who can teach you many things. The ones who you connect with on a deeper level, the ones who you can trust and respect, are important. I think that too much importance is placed on romantic relationships. Of course, our life could be more enriched from a healthy romantic relationship, but I think a basic human need is to have healthy platonic relationships. We put so much importance on the romantic idea of love, when love can be found in many different forms.

I currently have plenty of time to think, hence this post. I will be back on my feet again soon, ready to take on the next challenge. Now, I have some choices to make, but I am having a hard time between the many paths of life I could take. I don’t know how much of it is what society wants from me, and how much is what I want from myself.

I still have much to learn and a lot to improve on. I am still figuring out what life is all about.  You can let your problems and your differences consume you and let you believe that you can’t achieve the things you want. You can let them be reasons to stay down and say “Why me?” Or, you can use those same problems and same differences to become stronger, more motivated, and gain a much better insight on life. It isn’t easy and it takes hard work, it takes guts, it takes being uncomfortable, but you can create your own destiny. You don’t have to accept a life that doesn’t fulfill you.

Let me know your thoughts in the comments!