“For everything you have missed, you have gained something. For everything you gain, you have lost something else. It is about your outlook towards life. You either regret or rejoice.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Life’s simply a matter of perspective. Everyone’s fighting a hard battle, every single person we meet has lost someone they’ll never get back. Each and every one of us wishes for something that, most probably, we’ll never have.
But what we think about all this is crucial.
I’m going to be honest. When I think about the whole half-full/half-empty glass thing, I’m usually the one who thinks of himself as being without a glass.
And it’s not about envy or greed or whatever, because I don’t like to compare myself to others. It’s just that I have this grand vision of who I should be as a person, and most times I fell short of that. I always see myself as I really am when I look in the mirror, and yet I can clearly see who I want to be.
And the two are not alike.
Funny thing, but those two are never alike. What we choose to do about it, though, is what really matters.
Do we panic? Do we give up? Do we make ourselves miserable?
It’s not about the destination, but about the journey. It’s not about reaching a place, but about realizing that the long road toward that place is, in fact, the place itself.
There’s no pursuit of happiness. There’s no reaching for something.
It’s just us and the long and winding road.
It’s just us and life.
And the way we choose to see things.
But maybe it’s worth remembering once in a while that we never see things as they are. Our vision is distorted by who we are. We perceive everything around us through a lens composed of qualities and flaws. We compare and we remember and we analyze.
The things that no longer are will always be compared to what is. Or what could be. Or what will be.
We try to make sense of things. To find meaning.
But let me ask you a question: do you think that “meaning” is something to be found? Or given? Created from all our previous experiences?
Do you think that we find who we are after years and years of wandering or do we create that self?
What I’m really trying to say is that how we look at things is how we look at ourselves. What we see around us is what we see inside us. If there’s no beauty and magic in the world, you’ll never find beauty and magic in yourself. Or happiness.