Decisions

Nobody ever promised us that life would be easy. Nobody promised that we wouldn't experience struggle, people make mistakes, get knocked down, or have moments when we couldn't understand why life was happening the way it was. But it's gonna be a time when you have to make a decision: will I let my pain consume me or can it guide me?

That decision changed my perspective and potentially saved my life. Every day I wake up faced with a decision and I choose not to place blame. I started asking myself, what can I do differently? How could I learn from it? Could it help me repair who I could become?

You gotta be accountable, and understand that everything that happened is not all on you. It's realizing that what you do differently, whatever you decide to do next, is on you! That's power!

Once you understand that, your past no longer gets the anniversary. We wanna grind, we wanna win, we wanna become something over circumstances never predicted. Maybe that's why I write to you. I can't go back to give my younger self everything he didn't know. I can't whisper in his ear before every wrong turn. I can't save him from every mistake. But maybe I can teach you. Maybe something I learned through my own valleys can keep you from having to walk through them.

Maybe you'll understand at 12 what took somebody else until 30, 40, or 50 to understand. And if just one young person catches on – if one of you learns that your circumstances don't determine your worth, that accountability doesn't make you weak, that pain doesn't have to turn you bitter, that happiness isn't something you have to wait until you're rich, successful, famous, or admired to experience – then every single word I write has a purpose.

So don't spend life wishing you were inside a shooting star. Look at what you've survived. Look at everything you're still capable of overcoming. Maybe the light you’ve been looking for was supposed to come from you.