Often a lot of people will ask me, ” why do you live such a stressed life?” They will tell me about how I need to enjoy life and have fun sometimes. And it’s true, I do live by the quote,
“Work first, then play.” But recently when two spontaneous pneumothorax’ left me with four holes in my chest, one month worth of classes to catch up, a smaller right lung,and hazy view of life after thinking that I might almost die, these experiences change you, it’s really hard to stop your own views from changing. They slowly do. Just like how your countenance changes every year but you never realize it, until you look at old photographs. That’s how much I changed. Even though I learned to take even more care of my body, I realized just how fragile life really is. Everyone around me was shocked. A girl who was so strong and healthy! How could something like this happen to her. And it was so hard to get past all the emotional conflicts inside me when everyone on the outside kept reminding me of a weak helpless girl. My parents were like,” We don’t care if you don’t succeed in life, your health is the most important.” They always repeat this mantra every single day. It really does start to take a toll on me. With constant reminders of how I’m not normal ‘anymore.’ People should know by now, that I don’t live for myself. I live for others who don’t have the blessings like I do. Because I realized that artificial things make you feel good, but not forever. But things like changing someone’s life for the better, really affect your whole life. They live with you, they become an attachment of your soul. Always reminding you what your capable of. Capable of changing someone’s life, and starting a chain reaction of life changing moments. That’s what’s most important to me. My passions like drawing or writing mean so much to me. But what I live for, is to really help somebody. That’s why things like success or fame seem so ideal, but in reality they might not be the best. Of course I’d like to live a great life, go to the best university, have the best things, but those are not prominent. Things like that sometimes get in the way of the big picture, and they can really cloud potential. Chasing the unimportant things in life will get you far, but I think the people who aren’t in the news but are changing lives without recognition are the people we should all learn from. The people who don’t need recognition to fuel themselves, they are fraught of love. An overflowing beautiful mess of wonderful things that light up each affected person. But one of the saddest things, is that they aren’t recognized of their potential. They might be discarded or thrown to the side compared to others who might have a lot of degrees or lengthy resumes. Sometimes life isn’t fair. Actually most times life isn’t fair. But people learn to keep moving on, to keep living. That’s just who we are.