Youthful Life: X

"Things never go the way you expect them to. That's both the joy and frustration in life. I'm finding as I get older that I don't mind, though. It's the surprises that tickle me the most, the things you don't see coming." Michael Stuhlbarg As a kid I used to spend hours entranced in a daze, dreaming of wonders, possibilities, and opportunities in my own head. I'd imagine my life working as a doctor, delivering babies, and changing lives. Other times it'd be writing books, empowering others through reading, and travelling the world spreading my stories. Soon, reality came flooding back, and things never happened the way I had imagined they would. Life was either more exciting or underwhelming, but never followed the course of the script I had drafted all along. We can plan for life, but life never goes according to plan - at least not ours. And that dissonance between our fantasies and our realities can be jarring, but in it there's a...

" People are uncomfortable about disability, and so interactions can become unintentionally uncomfortable." Stella Young College messed me up . It's been almost three years since I moved my tassel from right to left, and yet I feel the lingering effects of that experience for me. I'm specifically speaking of those debilitating memories of absolutely failing exams in my science courses. Surprise, I was pre-med throughout the majority of my college career - switched from biology to religion as my major, and took some GPA hits. I had constructed the entirety of my identity in becoming a medical doctor that even when I was performing abysmally, dreaded going to class, and struggled to grasp the concepts presented to me I continue to persist instead of realizing I had other talents, gifts, abilities, and goals. I eventually figured out my real passions with journalism and educational advocacy, but not before I had crashed, burned, and failed many an exam, quiz, home...

" Healing is a matter of time, but it is sometimes also a matter of opportunity." Hippocrates Life is about experiences - all of them, the good and the bad. Life is about making sense of those experiences, and gleaning what we can from them. Sometimes those lessons are easy to extract, to apply, and to keep pressing on - other times, we struggle to find the root cause, the bottom line, the essentials. It's the things that have caused us pain, heartache, and that indescribable heaviness that elude us. We have to learn how to heal or else the wounds that have been inflicted upon us will never do just that. We have to find the right bandage, surgery, or rehab to get us to where we need to be. Each healing process is going to be unique but it has to be appropriate for our trials and tribulations.  Healing is as much about the process of healing as it is choosing to heal. That is choosing to unpack the baggage we lug around - the hurt, anger, sadness, resentment, anx...

" The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another." William James Stress is meant to be temporary; not a permanent state of being. Once more with feeling, and I'll say it again for those in the back. Stress is caused by our reaction to the things going in on our lives, not the things themselves. Think about that. That means that as we are able, we can manage our reactions. We have the choice to downplay or highlight the impact of what we face. We get to determine what something or someone means to us. In a world that glorifies the disease of being busy, demands contribution to an incessant news cycle, and a sacrifice of the entirety of who you for are for "productivity" - stress has become normalized. If you're not stressed out, to the point where its toll is visible on your body, then you're not working hard enough.  Stress is not a measure of success nor is it a quantifier of hardship endured. Stress should...