368. awe
There are certain moments that affect me more than I know how to explain. For most of my life, I didn’t know what to do with that part of myself, or why it affected me the way it did. The moments don’t feel sad in any obvious way, and they are not attached to pain, loss, or grief. The feeling is closer to being overwhelmed by something beautiful or sincere, as if something I usually keep buried is suddenly brought close enough to the surface to recognize. It is a strange kind of emotion because I have been so conditioned to think that becoming emotional means something is wrong, like it must be tied to pain or loss. But this doesn't feel like I am being hurt. It feels like I am being reminded.
The moments that do this to me usually have something to do with acceptance, love, belonging, or the sudden realization of what someone means to another person. It can happen in a movie when the emotional truth of a relationship finally becomes clear, like when someone realizes they were loved, or when a scene turns in a way that changes the entire weight of what came before it. It can happen when a singer stops mid-song only to have the crowd continue singing every word back to them. For a few seconds, the person who created the song is standing there almost stunned while thousands of people carry it for them. Something about that kind of moment reaches me in a way almost nothing else does because it shows a level of connection that modern life rarely makes room for.
For my entire life, I thought this meant I was too emotional, too sensitive, or too easily moved. I was embarrassed to feel moved. I treated that response as something I needed to explain away because it didn’t fit with how I felt I was expected to show up in the world. There is very little room for reverence anymore, for that quiet, overwhelming sense that something in front of us matters more than we can fully explain. We are expected to choose control over vulnerability, logic over wonder, productivity over presence, and independence over interconnection. Life becomes something to manage, optimize, and prove, while the unquantifiable experiences that actually make us feel more alive are treated as distractions from the “real” work of everyday life.
I think the feeling I am describing is awe. It is the moment when something reaches beyond the ordinary scale of your day and opens you up to the larger interconnectedness of life. It can happen looking up at a night sky, in music, in movement, in art, or in simply witnessing a moment of human connection that feels more honest than the world usually allows. Awe pulls us out of the cramped room of our own thoughts and reminds us that there are parts of life that cannot always be measured, monetized, explained, or reduced to usefulness.
And I think that is why those moments hit me the way they do. They remind me of the things I deeply want and rarely admit with the same clarity: to love, to be loved, to belong, to feel that my presence matters, and to experience life as something more than survival or achievement. The shame I have felt around being moved by those things probably says more about the world I have learned to survive in than it says about the feeling itself.
Modern life has a way of hardening people while calling it maturity. It teaches us to become more productive, independent, logical, self-contained, and less available to the very things that make life meaningful. It sells us the conditions of isolation and then offers us products, status, and achievement as substitutes for connection. Somewhere in that process, many of us learn to distrust the parts of ourselves that are still soft enough to be moved.
I am starting to believe those moments that spark emotion inside of me are not embarrassing interruptions. They are signs of something in me that has not been completely buried. They are light coming through the cracks in the harder version of myself I thought I had to become. They remind me that passion, love, beauty, and belonging carry a kind of value that modern life keeps trying to make us forget, and maybe the part of me that gets overwhelmed by those moments is the part that still remembers what matters.
295. blue-tinted glasses
We like to think that our experiences are mutual. That reality is defined by our perception of an experience, and shared by all the same. But reality isn’t neutral for any of us. In fact, we each see a world not for the reality of what it is, but through the lens of our individual and unique beliefs.
Imagine donning blue-tinted glasses, all your experiences would be interpreted through shades of blue. That’s how belief works. We see the world, and our perception of “reality” through the lens of what we already believe, placing our personal spin on everything that happens to us.
For example, if we believe that the world is a scary and dangerous place, we are always going to see the negative in the world, as opposed to the boundless beauty that also exists within the same plane. It is our beliefs that cause us to feel a certain way which affects how we ultimately experience any given situation. If we’re only attuned to see blue, and feel that this is a universal experience, it can be hard to communicate with someone who can only see red. But if we can understand that all our experiences are unique, we can make an effort to provide more context when it comes to establishing some middle ground between any of us.
251. fitting in
Where would we be if we worried more about what our future-selves thought about the decisions we make on a daily basis, than the people we currently surround ourselves with? When we’re young, we worry about how we’re perceived by everyone around us. We often make decisions that aren’t in line with who we truly are, instead making those decisions that best fit the narrative we want to fit into. But after a while, we figure out that making decisions based on how we’re perceived by others isn’t the best way to create a life we want to live. At a certain point, we need the courage to stray from the pack we’ve been running with to have a chance to build a life that makes us happy or at least gives us a chance at that happiness.
Part of growing up is separating ourselves from who we thought we were supposed to be — someone defined by the people we surround ourselves with — and the person we need to become — someone defined by making decisions that best align with the future we want to create. The more we struggle and fight who we are, by making decisions that try to fit our lives into a framework that our social group deemed “acceptable,” the less happy and fulfilling our lives will be.
Make decisions based on who you truly want to be, not who you want to impress or fit in with. Sooner or later you’ll realize that the people you were trying to impress weren’t really even paying attention to begin with.
218. expectations
It’s our own expectations that hurt us, not the reality we’re faced with. Whatever we think should happen for us isn’t real, but exists as a projection of what we want our world to look like. When things don’t go our way, it’s easy to feel like a victim, but the thing is that if we allow ourselves to fall to that level of thinking, we lose all our power to effectively change the situation moving forward.
We are not separate from the problems we encounter, we are part of them. Our experience is based on our perception. Any expectations we place on outcomes is of our doing. The sooner we can accept the responsibility that our expectations are under our control, the sooner we can positively adjust to the consequences.
Our power lies within our approach. We can never know the outcome of a certain situation, so being tied to any particular outcome can never prepare us to rise to the occasion.
172. you’re in control
The good news is you’re in control, the bad news is… you’re in control. Your thoughts, perceptions, and intentions are a choice that have the power to color the outcome of whatever situation you find yourself in. If you’re fearful and conditioned with a victim mindset, you will be much more likely to find negativity in your life. Whereas, if you’re grateful, open and willing to learn from all the experiences you encounter, you will be much more likely to come across things that provide positive sensations.
It’s a feedback mechanism; what you put out, is what you’re going to get back. Think of it as what you appreciate, appreciates. Seeing your life through a negative lens will never serve to better your situation as it will only attract things to reinforce that view. On the other hand, accepting what comes along with gratitude, will bring more things you can be grateful for.
As you progress through this life, it is important to understand that we are in control. We hold the power to create the life we want. Shifting the perspective away from what is happening to you, and instead, to what is happening for you can make all the difference in the world.
163. engage on your terms
Walk through this life the way you want. There is always going to be someone telling you to do it “this way,” or you’re wrong for doing it “that way,” or you’re simply crazy for tying. Listening to these people can be helpful for trying berries in the woods, but when it comes to figuring out how to live your best life, their advice is little more than hubris. To think that anyone has it figured out is absurd. We would all be better off if we had the social freedom to engage life on our own terms. Trying things that are taboo, foolish, and impractical, are the only way we can define our own limits, rather than those imposed upon us from the crowd.
146. strokes on a canvas
Whether we realize it or not, each of us has an internalized picture of ourselves. It may not be easily definable to our conscious minds, but it’s there. This self-image is how we present ourselves to the world. It is the person you are. It’s built from all our beliefs we hold about ourselves. But most of those beliefs have unconsciously taken shape from past experiences, in success and failure, in love and heartbreak, in triumph and humiliation, and the way others have responded to our actions throughout our lives starting from when we were young. Each of these experiences paint one stroke on the canvas that becomes the “self-image”. Just as when a painter lays down a brush stroke uniquely changing or constructing their image, so too does each interaction we have become a part of us. We never question the validity of what is laid down, but act as if each part of us is justified.
All our actions, thoughts, behaviors, and to a great extent the limits we place on our abilities, are consistent with our self-image. We “act like” the sort of person we perceive ourselves to be. If the stroke on our canvas provide a blueprint of how we see ourselves and approach the world. We cannot act outside of the lines of who we perceive ourselves to be, in spite of all our conscious efforts to the contrary. The person who thinks of themself as a failure, will inevitably find a way to fall short in all situations, no matter how hard they try or how much willpower they stand to exert. Just as, the person who believes themself to be a victim, will always find the circumstances to invariably verify that opinion.
Who we think we are, doesn’t have to be who we are. With the right awareness, the canvas can change. We can’t erase the past, but we can create new layers that help us redefine the image we see.