Learning is a vital, core process of any animate being. From the moment you force your eyelids open, you're surrendering to the world of learning. The teacher is the universe, and you, the earnest student. 

Daily, you're forced to stomach lessons--you learn that people aren't good for you, you aren't good for people. You learn about the cyclic nature of love and loss and the in-between. You learn about the threads that string the universe together ever-so diligently, about the laws that hold together the agitated atoms forging your material body. You learn about plants slithering up to the sun, and the way the Earth churns and burns beneath your feet. There are lessons everywhere you want to look. 

I think that in all the years I've been alive, I've never so clearly, distinctly realised that life is just one shivering pulse of a heart, one atom in a sea, one star in a constellation. You see it, you blink, and then it's gone. There are things you learn that will stay imprinted in your atoms for the rest of your life.

There are things about me, learning and having to come to accept, to love, to embrace myself despite every flaw. How looks, and money are material things that people often try to encapsulate as immaterial channels to their happiness. But think of this: you are alive every single moment, and you should try to experience every second being conscious that every second alive is every second closer to death. If you want something in your life, you only have so many more hours to catch the floating butterfly and the drifting daydream. 

Do not expect life to be easy. Do not expect to come to a critical point where from then on, the fields are green and the night sky is starry. There is no 'point' in your life where you will simply be happy. Happiness is not the endgame, happiness is the journey. The endgame is lying, lithe and on your deathbed, but looking back and knowing that you did everything you could, and you lived in every way that you could and you wanted to. That you splashed your walls with blood and art and sew together words by the midnight oil with a stuttering, withering hand. That despite every drawback, every knife-to-your-ribs, spears-to-your-heart, you sunk your teeth into your passions, your dreams and waved the butterfly net to catch them anyway.

I've struggled with the inferiority that comes with being an asian girl living in a western society, and yet through my struggles I've come, with my limbs torn and my abdomen black and charred by flame. But struggles in life have simply taught me lessons. Lessons about what I love, what I don't . What matters, what doesn't. Who I love, who I don't. About the struggles that immigrant parents have to face to try to lay a cement foundation on the new ground they're on with twigs and stone. About sympathy and empathy. About no one being better than me, and me being better than no one. In the end, the currency that we all spent was time, and time on this earth is fickle and short. About people who hang their noses high in the air, assuming things about others, assuming things about the world. Because soon, they will start to assume things about themselves. If you live in a sphere, you will never see outside your bubble until someone pops it. 

I think people do not think about death enough. Death should not terrify you--death you motivate you to live now, and live the most, at every moment possible. Live, be nice to others, do things that make you happy, do what you're passionate about, and be unapologetic. No one else can live your life for you--only you can.

- xC