These days, I’ve been learning so much about life. Sounds cliche, right? But then again, how can anyone dismiss precious opportunities to realize a new insight about the tiresome nature of life, or renew a love for life that may already be worn out?

Well, that was me. Getting tired of life and really fulfilling the “senioritis” stereotype, finding no more motivation to grow anymore – not just academically or as a human being, but mentally and socially – losing stability.

At one point, it was so bad that I literally (not figuratively) felt the weight of the world pushing down and crushing me to bone. Except it wasn’t literally doing that, but I literally felt as if that was happening. Everything seemed to be going in the polar opposite direction I had been planning my life to go at the end of my last year in high school.

College news (sorry to bring it up) felt like one slap in the face after another. Beyond the results, I was and still am tired of masking a facade that I wasn’t overwhelmingly upset about the news when I was actually so disappointed in myself, just to look strong in a society where grades and college are everything now; and very likely because of those results, I slowly started losing grip of my desire to finish off the year strong. And on top of that, I lost the three people I had considered my best friends.
In the end, it boiled down to reevaluating my mentality and determination through it all.

So I tried something new: instead of being defenseless in letting my hopes for a better ending to this chapter be crushed, I started to think about what I could find happiness in. And when I did that, I’m not going to lie and say my life dramatically turned around and everything changed. But what did change is my ability to take in, accept, absorb whatever approaches me. Whether it’s on a silver platter or on a dirty paper, your perception of reality depends all on your response.

You see, happiness is a choice. Life isn’t always going to be your favorite journey but it will definitely be a journey worth embarking on if you can harbor the brainpower to choose to be happy when you feel you have the right to be the angriest and most pitiful person in the world. Then you can really enjoy life by the second and not look back one day to find blissful memories clouded by depressing memories. I sincerely hope that, like me, some of you can muster up the courage to wake up each day saying, “Today, I choose joy.”

Reste toi-meme,

Michelle Kang