Life is like a train; we neither know where it will pass nor exactly where it will arrive. With every new age, we leave our current wagon for another. These abandoned wagons don’t vanish; they remain behind us, yet they travel with us until the train reaches its final destination.
As we move forward, filling our bags with good memories, the painful ones are rebranded as experience and integrated into our lives. We look back at these experiences sometimes with a smile, sometimes with tears. While some bring wisdom, others leave an ache that ruins the taste of life. One might wish to have stayed small and ignorant, but life is tasked with making us grow through pain. In this process, the heart expands, learning to love more deeply. Through loss, we realize the true value of what we hold. We must learn to appreciate things without needing to lose them first. We will all eventually face loss and feel incomplete, but the essence of life is to find wholeness within those gaps and continue by multiplying every pain with love.
The Beauty Of Incompleteness
Growing up means learning that not every deficiency needs to be filled. Some things remain incomplete because they have no missing parts to begin with. As children, we strive to close every gap, even those that can never be filled. As we mature, we realize that some things are beautiful precisely because they are incomplete.
We learn to stop trying to change others. If someone’s nature doesn’t resonate with ours, we learn to walk away rather than trying to mold them. Unnecessary effort only distracts us from our own path. This path isn’t always scenic; sometimes the wind is cold, and the rain soaks us. Other times, it feels like flying through a sunlit breeze. Regardless of the weather, the walker remains the same. Life is a game of tag between joy and sorrow with no ultimate winner—only the meanings we attribute to it. How we see life depends not on what we look at, but on what we choose to see.
Healing One’s Own Wounds
Sometimes life is a river. We are sculpted by crashing against the rocks. We emerge from the water marked by dried blood. I do not love these wounds; I wish growth didn’t require such pain.
Life is not a linear plane, a perfect plan, or a steady compass. It is a series of falls that take our dreams and trust down with us. They break and diminish, but they do not vanish. When you stand up, you gather the remaining pieces. If you wait for someone else to fix you, you become dependent on a “repairman.” You must learn to heal yourself. My own repair might be flawed or unpolished, but I prefer my own imperfect handiwork over a “perfect” piece fixed by someone else.
A New Wagon
I used to be sad about growing older; now I rejoice in the new things added to my bag. Some things fall out—the ones that “didn’t fit.” Whether they feared staying or I simply grew tired of carrying them, I let them go. I prefer lightness.
I love the rest that follows exhaustion and the path that leads “home.” I cherish both my losses and my gains; without loss, there would be no room for the new. I have learned to build stronger foundations in the craters left by past explosions. Yet, I no longer allow everyone into my garden. I no longer waste my light trying to illuminate every darkness or wait for the sun in every rain. Let the darkness be; my climate is no longer the monsoon.
As a new wagon is added to my train, I am packing my belongings. I am savoring the final moments of this stage.
Goodbye 20. I love what you added to me and even what you took away. We might replace the missing pieces one day, or perhaps we’ll leave them incomplete.
And welcome 21. Twenty-one years ago, I achieved the great success of learning to walk and talk. I hope that twenty-one years from now, you will still be teaching me how to run.