From nowhere comes this:

This will be my vent. What a small vent it is. I don’t have the patience to squeeze all my indecipherable frustrations through these small pores, so what I say seems random and juvenile.

Mankind can be such a shallow, traitorous, parasitic thing. Only one in a million are the beacons against which I’ve been mistakenly measuring the world against. Only one in a million remain great in the face of adversity and a true reflection of a human being. And my fear right now is that I’m not one of those million, the person I always fancied myself to be thanks to the false hopes of movies and Disney. Because in these sequential moments of induced panic and despair that we call life, I find myself unraveling, a part of me sulking that things are not the way that they should be. If circumstances were the way that they were “meant” to be, then I can be myself, happy, and expressive and smart and brilliant and just plain Saman. But in these tough times, I cant be myself, so I just sit back miserably and in despair hoping that they’ll pass and I can finally breathe and be myself again. But I think I have to start realizing, that those easy times with no hardships was never really meant to be. They were free bonuses. Not life. Life is these hard parts. The parts I’m wishing would go away so I can be myself, and so maybe I’m missing out on life because I’m under the delusional impression that the times where I can shine at my brightest will be times when circumstances will be easy.

Its how much you shine when times are tough that determines who you are. Not how much you shine when it’s convenient. It’s the tough, inconvenient times when you get stabbed in the back by people closest to you. Its during these times where you disappoint yourself by failing to achieve your aspirations which in turn leads to an immeasurably self-destructive doubt in yourself. It’s in life’s greatest moments when you feel your back being broken by those closest to you. There is no other life, just this one. So shine, if you can, little whiner. Shine. Nobody said it was going to be easy. To give off light, the little piece of wood has to burn.

So burn. Burn alive, and be brilliant. Don’t lament burning, rather celebrate being a light, and keep shining.

Regardless of circumstance, regardless of self-doubt, and pain and failures and losing every single thing you hold dear and feeling yourself being passed off like dust off a shoulder, keep heads high and shine as if there’s not a feather of burden on your back. That’s what will make you exceptional. Not the easy victories, but the victories in the midst of death and destruction pulling you down with every step you take. That’s what will make the victories memorable.

There it is again: my childish short-sighted optimism distorting hard reality into a warped breed of optimism, completely forgetting the original worry and turning it into false hope. Sentimentalizing the real issue.