Take a moment and think about your current situation. There is probably at least one person or thing for which you are genuinely happy is a part of your life. Now think about all of the things that had to fail to get you to this point. It’s likely that you’ve experienced numerous setbacks and heartbreaks, and there were probably many times along the path to now where you felt like throwing in the towel. You may even feel like giving up right now. Without these failures, however, you would never feel the satisfaction of overcoming an obstacle. Your life would be in a permanent stasis, always falling short of its full potential.
Last year, I lost a good friend to suicide and my sense of balance was immediately destroyed. Afterwards, I fell victim to depression and had extreme anxiety over what would become of me and anyone close to me. “Which of my friends and family would die next?” “Would I ever feel normal again?” These were the thoughts that consumed my life. I felt as though everything good in the world had suddenly vanished and all that remained was a painful uncertainty. Honestly, there were times when I would have rather been dead than dealing with the problems in my life. Fortunately, over the next year and a half I learned my most valuable lesson to date—that my reactions define me.
Let me first say that I am NOT condoning suicide. It is never the answer to your problems because you will not be around to see anything improve. I urge anyone reading this who may be considering suicide to talk to someone. Suicide hurts your family, friends, and anyone that ever came into contact with you. My friend's suicide did, however, bring me to this point. I’m here writing this blog against suicide, and you’re reading it. LIVE Life will be speaking at many schools to kids who need to hear that there is hope for them. Because of my reaction, other lives may very well be saved from suicide. If I had let his death and my fear of uncertainty silence my voice, my life would still be the hell that it was after he died.
I’ve seen firsthand that what defines us is not so much what happens as it is how we choose to react. Since then I’ve had other major hurdles such as growing apart from a terrific long-term girlfriend. In time, life brought me close to another great girl who urged me to turn down a job offer that she knew I wouldn’t enjoy in order to pursue a position as a line therapist with children on the autism spectrum. Now I’m on the path to medical school with a strong passion for developing a children’s mental health clinic for kids with developmental disorders and mental illnesses. It is my hope that one day LIVE Life will be able to fund this clinic and prevent other adolescents and young adults from taking their lives. Without these hurdles to jump over, I wouldn’t be doing any of this. How I reacted defined me.
I’m here to say that it gets better. How do I know this? Because it has to! My new happiness has come from learning to cherish the good, keep the bad in perspective, and keep moving forward under the realization that my balance will inevitably change again. This is a fact of life and there’s no way around it. You have within you the ability to turn any situation into a positive if you choose, and doing so will help to shape you into a better version of yourself if you let it. Life’s many twists and turns will afford you tremendous opportunities to better yourself and your world, but you must not sit idly as each one passes you by. You must react! I hopped out of bed at 3AM to write this because I couldn’t fall asleep when inspiration struck. I reacted! Know this: YOU control your destiny. Your problems need not define you. Your reaction is everything! Make it count and keep pushing forward. You'll thank yourself later.
With love,
-JL
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