The Weight of Your Own Choices

I’ve made mistakes, plenty of them. Some were mine, some were life’s, and some belonged to the wrong people I trusted. I’ve gone through shit, and I’ve created shit, and through all of it, I realized that life doesn’t hand out success like a neatly wrapped gift. Some people seem to glide through existence without a scratch, their lives smooth and predictable, and you wonder if they even think about the weight of the choices they make. For a long time, I envied that simplicity. I envied the people who live without the friction of reflection, the ones who never stop to ask themselves uncomfortable questions, who never wrestle with the chaos inside. It sounds peaceful, but maybe it’s a different kind of emptiness: a life without depth, without self-interrogation, without the sharp edges that make you feel alive, even when it hurts.

I aligned myself with social norms thinking that fitting in would bring safety or acceptance. And sure, there’s nothing wrong with existing in society’s framework,  there are boxes to tick, rules to follow, and obligations that we can’t just ignore. But even when you follow the rules, life doesn’t guarantee satisfaction, and sometimes the very attempt to comply exposes you to failure in ways you never anticipated. I failed spectacularly in that sense, not because I wasn’t trying, but because the framework itself never fit me completely. And in those moments, the role of luck, the chance encounters, the people you meet, the alliances that make or break you becomes glaringly obvious. No amount of effort can fully compensate for the absence of good fortune in people. You can be skilled, disciplined, determined, but if life deals you the wrong cards, especially in relationships, the outcome is often out of your hands.

I keep coming back to this idea that life is part choice, part compromise, and part luck, particularly when it comes to the people around us. And the harsh truth is that many of us will never fully control that mix. I’ve watched myself spiral into blaming others, pointing fingers, grumbling at circumstances, instead of looking squarely at my own contribution to the chaos. And yet, the chaos itself — the mistakes, the failures, the misaligned encounters — has been my truest teacher. It forces you to reflect, to question, to feel the friction that a smooth, linear life never allows. There’s a lesson in that discomfort, a raw, uncomfortable education that teaches more about yourself than success ever could.

Maybe that’s the price of living deeply — of refusing to exist in the safe bubble where questions never arise and mistakes never happen. Maybe failing spectacularly, learning painfully, and wrestling endlessly with the layers of your own choices and misfortunes is still better than drifting through life unexamined, untouched, and untested. If luck is about people, then perhaps the trick isn’t avoiding failure entirely, but learning to stop betting on the wrong ones — including the versions of ourselves that no longer fit. Because in the end, life isn’t about perfection or safety; it’s about presence, reflection, and the messy, beautiful, painful act of becoming fully aware of who you are, even when that awareness burns.