"Life doesn't apologize. Move on."
"Life doesn't apologize. Move on."
The day a friend shared this on Facebook, I realized my biggest delusion was that I'd been expecting life to make amends or to say sorry.
When I wrote my first short film, in which the protagonist was a porcelain doll, my supervisor, in tears (yeah, that was cringe), said the ending was so bleak - "add a sliver of hope, anything!"
I did, just because she asked, but it's probably those 'slivers of hope' at the end of many plays, movies, novels and TV series that contributed to our distorted understanding of life.
After every blow, I had told myself that it was only because I was being prepared for something bigger, or a 'new beginning'... and God knows I've had too many blows. Growth is painful, anyone?
I had always almost immediately got up, dusted myself and moved forward with all my might, my eyes fixed on that 'light at the end of the tunnel.' Watching me ready to 'slay' again, people were always either impressed or intimidated. I’d often been described as ‘too much,’ which I took as a compliment.
But only a few months ago did I realize that, almost certainly, life is a story – and it’s not a fictional one.
I've been given a story that wasn't to my liking, and I constantly fought it, believing that all the pain, all the disappointments, all the betrayals, all the failures, and all the traumas were just preparing me to unlock my ‘full potential’ and be the Zorro that sets the world to rights.
Life has given me a different story, and Life is not sorry about it.
Every time I felt the weight of injustice suck me into that abyss of an excruciating need for a ‘sliver of hope,’ I remembered those words and slept it off.
But this realization cost me my last drop of passion, and I'd always thought I had a bottomless well of it.
Last night a friend asked what I wanted from life. For the first time, I want my boat to stop rocking so hard. I need the waters to be calm and for my body to float in tranquillity. I want a break from fighting turbulent flows.
Probably it's time to accept that the future really doesn't hold plot twists or redemption or resolutions, and not everything happens for a reason. The reason could just be our stories' development... or a character arc situation.
Wars produce nothing but graveyards, and a war against our stories can produce a graveyard of hopes and dreams...
Or the birth of a new, unlikely one?
Perhaps hope is not in a ‘new beginning.’
It’s where we least expect it. In a mother’s smile, in a father’s presence, in the twitch of a rabbit’s nose, in the sun stroking our skin, in an estranged friend’s determination to be there for us, in the tiny hands of a squirrel digging for a nut he’d buried months ago, in the first sip of coffee in the early morning, in a warm tear after a long day, in an interaction with a stranger, in a sibling's banter, or in the moon peeking through the window when life is too much.
Maybe our salvation is in being at peace with our stories because "life doesn't apologize.”
“Move on."
Image courtesy of @tello.eman