Why Life Is Worth Living
Sun shining down on the ocean water, the waves big and rough. A slight breeze blew at my hair as my dad and I carried the kayak down to the private beach at our Air bnb. We place the kayak in the water and my dad pushes off. The waves made like a roller coaster as we went up and back down again. As we turned to come back a wave hit us and we were thrown into the choppy water and had to get back to the shore. With each wave that hit us the more salt water we swallowed and the more tired we grew. Finally after what felt like forever my father pushed me to the shore. I stood up and looked out and didn't see my dad, hence my fear of water and kayaks. I thought I had lost my dad and possibly myself, and it was one of the scariest days of my life. Then two days after this we had another incident causing fear of losing our lives. If you heard back in January of 2018, there was a false alarm that went off about a missal in Hawaii. So much panic caused by such a small alarm on a phone. When we got back from our trip my family started doing more and more things together and thought about life a little bit more. And it did bring up why is life worth living, as Joe Denlar said, "Every day is a bonus." (Honor Flight) I remember right before we left, I was standing on that beach, looking out at the ocean, it was so beautiful. I'm still so afraid to step in fast moving water or to be underwater at all, yet... it was so calming to look out there and to breathe in the salty air, and see something that I was so scared that it would kill me, and to think it was so calming.
Walking through the twisty turns of life, we go through so many ups and downs, births and deaths, failures and triumphs. But all the good and positive things outnumber the bad. Traveling along bumpy roads we define our values: friends, family, maybe even work. Most people overlook a major one, life itself. It's full of amazing things! Blue skies, giant trees, bees, flowers, and so many beautiful things. There's also the life of a person, hair, height, brown eyes or blue, personality, and even the name defines the value of who they are. You can choose how you value a simple thing differently than others, I choose to value life as the same thing, it'll always be different no matter who you talk to and a life of a person will forever be different. But we are all human and we breathe the same air and in the same way. In Honor Flight someone said, ¨Don't worry about how you're going to die, worry about how you're going to live.¨ Everyone looks towards the future and worries about dying, but living in the moment and what we're going to do with how we live. It's an incredibly dark thing to think about, which is why focusing on what's in the moment is amazing!
There was a point in my life where I constantly thought about how I was going to die, and at one point I thought it would end. In the last year I got diagnosed with anxiety and depression. Being in a giant worldwide pandemic made it so hard to deal with the demons inside my head. The constant darkness that followed me around with the light in my eyes slowing flickering dimmer and dimmer as the days went on. "The ones that didn't come back are the heroes." (Honor Flight) You never know what someone is going through, whether it's a war veteran who died inmist a battle or someone battling with suicidal thoughts. When I was at my darkest point in my life you probably wouldn't have guessed it. I've been one to laugh and crack jokes, I got a boyfriend and I was going on dates, hanging with friends! But it was a dark and lonely time. There was this day, I woke up and I just couldn't function, and I constantly had the same thought running through my head that day. On my way home from work, at like 1 in the morning I stopped my car near a river and went and sat on the cement barrier that overlooked a drop off. As I sat there with my head full of reasons, my eyes full of tears, my ears felt fuzzy with the sound of water. I looked up and around, at the beautiful scene before me, and I thought, "Do I really want to change the beauty of this?" I got up on my feet, went back to my car, and drove all the way home. One year later here I am. I never thought I would reach this peak of happiness and joy. Waking up the next morning gave me my strength, and seeing everything in a new light of what I called my "mental suicide" to give me reasons to live. Hence I started my sticky note project, I placed 1248 sticky notes around my room of reasons to live, people, things, movies, and so many amazing adventures. Even that cement barrier.
In an episode of One Strange Rock, Will Smith stated that we shouldn't think of life as a straight line. We can get wrapped up in thinking about how we die and in the reality of what we live in. It tends to make us think, birth, life, death, and that's it! It needs to go birth, death, birth, death, and so on. We're living the whole time while we're doing this cycle. Because as we live we change, as I said above about my ¨mental suicide" that was the death of something I was going through, but the birth of a new person, and it will continue this up until our actually deaths. So many things change throughout the years, people are going to be getting married, having kids! Others are going to go further on their educational journey, and find what they want to do as their job. Hence I'm still waiting for the birth of whatever I'm going to be doing next.
My favorite thing I was able to read was ¨Safety Third" by Mike Rowe. In this letter he talked about all the things he could have cried about but didn't, then he got to the point about not being able to do thanksgiving with his family and ended the letter with the words, ¨And so, I did.¨ Crying has never been a thing many people talk about. It's not a bad thing, in fact I think it's beautiful. Being happy enough to cry, or being so angry you can't help but choke out a sob. I used to make fun of my mother for crying so much and to be honest, I've probably cried more than her. For a couple months I honestly don't remember a time I didn't cry. That's just being strong though. I broke down sobbing driving home the other night, I got a notification that one of my tallys reached 30. I've been clean of self harm for 30 days, and driving home that night, 10th West never looked so beautiful. When we think everything is so bad we can't help but to cry, or sometimes we don't. But we keep telling ourselves, this is why life is worth living. Living in the moment, seeing something in a whole new light, and even crying, life will forever be worth living. I choose to get my strength and get to the beach, I choose to get off the barrier, I choose to get the tally to 30 days. I choose to keep living life... "And so, I did." (Rowe)
Afronofsky, Darren. Executive Producer. One Strange Rock, episode 6. 2018.
Prime Video
Hayes, Dan, Broga, Clay. Director. Honor Flight. 2012. Prime Vide\\\\\\
Rowe, Mike. "Safety Third." 2020. https://mike.rowe.com/tag/safety-third/
