It is harder to live.
You experience too much or not enough. You struggle uphill without a clear plateau in sight. Your priorities shift and what you’ve been working towards is suddenly invalidated. You stumble. You lose. You become covered in dirt and must wash yourself clean.
You listen to sad music when your spirits are up. You do everything incorrectly even when you know what needed to happen. You don’t ask questions because it’s scary to look vulnerable. You especially don’t want to look vulnerable.
We are imperfect beings because otherwise we are unable to learn. We’re not meant to know exactly what to do at all times. It’s never made more clear than when you look back on the moments of your life and realize that they’re an amalgamation of embarrassing, sad, fallible, and occassionally thrilling glimmers that can still produce a cringe or a rueful smile in your everday life. The state of happiness cannot exist without its opposite: we take the bitter with the sweet. Our strength is the product of our struggles.
I intend to make this post a hopeful one. Usually I write about my endeavors and artistic works on this day of the week, but I honestly admit to you that I have been “messing up” for the last few weeks on that front. I have been taking care of myself and making art has been put on hold. I have been re-evaluating and turning over in my mind every emotion in the book – even before this period of mourning, the semester had been studded with rough patches I had wanted to sit down and work through for some time. So I have been repeating the words that I started this piece with: it is harder to live. We are only given the burdens we can carry and, ultimately, we emerge as better people because of it. Believe me, I know what it is to be low down in the trenches.
For now, my thoughts are shrouded in a layer of “I’m not doing enough/doing it right/doing anything important.” I am being a huge worrywort because I have taken this time for myself to rest and heal the raw patches of my heart. But I know that there must be a reason for this struggle, a reason to put these parts of my life on hold for the moment and just to breathe. To recognize the importance of slowing down and recapturing the energy of the universe in my own fragile body. I recommend it to others almost daily – now it’s for me to practice what I preach.