Today, I realized something. I realized that it’s great to feel things. It’s admirable to cry, to react, to experience every emotion. I realized that it’s okay to have bad experiences. It’s okay to disappoint people, it’s alright to fail, it’s great to hope but it’s also fair to lose hope. And I realized that every single person who has tried to make me feel or experience less of anything, every single person who has caused me to overthink before doing something, hell, caused me to be scared to act, is wrong. My dad, who always gets irritated when people cry in front of him, is wrong. My mom, who always makes me take the cautious path even though it’s not always what I want to do, is wrong. All of the people, who think not doing anything or not feeling anything is better than the opposite, are thoroughly mistaken.

 

Even the guy who lived, well a lot of years ago, had come to that conclusion. I’m talking about Heraclitus, the guy who thought fire was what everything came from. He had some weird opinions, yes, but he agreed with me about this; the unity of opposites and the concept of impermanence. He basically said that nothing exists without its opposites and everything changes, thus everything has to become its opposite at the end of the day. He thought that in order for the concept of zero, the concept of nothingness to exist, we had to find something that’s static. Something that won’t become its opposite or something that doesn’t exist with its opposite, like the pluses and minuses they teach us in math class. He said that the balance between opposites is what gives meaning to the positives or the negatives. 

 

So, back to my point. My point is that it’s okay to fail because the concept of success comes from the fact that humanity knows failure. If we never failed at anything, then we wouldn’t know the idea of success. Same with emotions. If we never experienced grief, we wouldn’t enjoy life. If we didn’t know sadness; happiness wouldn’t have any value to it. If we didn’t fight; would we call peace, ‘peace’? A line from one of my favorite songs is “Everything you lose is a step you take”. What if we didn’t take any steps? We wouldn’t have anything to lose, yes, but is that so good? To have felt nothing, to have experienced nothing, to have not lived? 

 

Feeling miserable, feeling hopeless, feeling disappointed, angry, heartbroken is okay. Because your heartbreak is proof that you have loved. Your disappointment and hopelessness is proof that you have trusted, you have hoped. And as long as we keep loving, hoping, believing; we will feel their opposites too but the sadness that we feel will give our joy more meaning. Our fights will make the success more worth it in the end. Our sweat and tears will come back to us as laughter and kisses.

 

Hence, today I realized that everything will equal each other in the end. Everything will become nothing; zero. I have two options regarding this matter. I can either accept that it doesn’t matter at the end anyway and acknowledge the fact that life, eventually, has no meaning because death exists or I can look at it in a more optimistic kind of way. A way in which I don’t get too frustrated about the fact that I cry a lot. Because it must mean that I will also laugh a lot. I can abolish my despair in terms of my failures because if failure exists, so shall success. I choose the second option. I choose to feel whatever I want to feel, I choose to experience all the good and the bad things. Because at the end of the day, if I will turn into nothingness, if my life will cross itself out with my death; why would I not live it however I want to live it? If “Everything you lose is a step you take”, I want to take as many steps as I can. I want to live my life without being afraid. I want to cry, laugh, hope, love, shout, fail… I want to feel those things, and their opposites. Just like how the experience of life brings death; and alas the cycle of zero continues.