If you happen to be one of those people who are still in the process of moving on from the past weeks’ events, when the sun sets to the west, take it as a reminder that no matter how long a day seems, everything comes to an end. It may feel like a long and dragging time, full of uncertainties, but sometimes, we need to see the darkness to know what light is. With a little bit of kindness, finding our way back to light will be a lot less challenging.
Many of us were drenched in a series of emotional letdowns and moments that we couldn’t seem to fathom. Doesn’t it feel like the universe is all-out in throwing in all hard punches? What does it want to tell us? What does it teach us? How we answer these questions can shift the direction of our lives. Living isn’t easy. Nobody said it would be. If it is, then maybe there is no need to understand why we do what we do.
The point is that we are all primed to face challenges and find answers to our questions. The moment we stop searching for answers, we lose our best chances of living a better life. We can’t win our battles without facing them. We can’t live life to its fullest without accepting that it’s never perfect. Understanding that living is a cycle of good and evil and not a carousel that only goes up will help us see things differently. Hopefully, when you look it in the eye, you see that it’s worth all the sweat, tears, and pain.
Allow yourself to feel what you need to feel.
The world we live in is a noisy place filled with blinding lights and frightening dark alleys. Whether we choose to take a step back or forward, our actions carry effects that lead us either to a slump or success. That is why our actions must be governed by what is morally right. When we hit the ground and get hurt, it is necessary for us to experience the pain. It is so because it’s the only way the world can teach us to prevent getting hurt again. And by extension, with what we learn, we share with others, too.
When you need to cry, let yourself cry but pour it all at once. When you start drowning, that’s when you move to get up and rise above the water. You can’t scream to the universe for things to end without actually doing something to make them stop. Nobody else will do it for you, and neither will it be handed to you on a silver platter. We don’t learn the same way. We don’t see things the way others do, but we all have the same power to recognize what’s weighing us down. As they say, knowing is half the battle, and life gives us battles all the time. We have to immerse ourselves in struggles to know what we do not want to get.
In the face of adversity and uncertainty, choose kindness.
It’s natural for people to react negatively to things inconvenient—take it as our defense mechanism. However, never forget that our problems and struggles are just small spots or blemishes in the universe—and it’s not worth losing our humanity for. What you experience is also being experienced by other people. The least we could do is not add to the weight others are carrying on their backs. If there is anything that can make any challenges feel a lot less heavy, it’s kindness and compassion.
Our entirety is way bigger than our problems and the things that make us feel despair. We are bigger than our bodies. Sometimes, there is peace in knowing that, while we face our battles in our own ways, we are never truly alone in going through them. Kindness makes us neighbors. Our problems and disasters remind us of our capacity for such.
Lest we forget, while we all look the same, we face our battles differently. What’s light for you may be heavy for others. When you receive kindness, it would be nice to pay it forward. We will never know if the person next to us is having a hard time, but we can instantly lighten things up even with as simple as a smile. Choose kindness in every way possible. This is how humanity survives in the smallest of places—dark or bright. Be a walking reminder that, like the sunset, no matter how long a day could get, it is bound to end to bring hope that we get to have another fighting chance to make things better when it rises again. Maybe, then, it will get better.
