YOLO!

It has been 21 years since I first saw light illuminating from the four corners of the room. I could barely see anything but the glares flashing through my eyelids.

The only sound I could hear were distressful cries from a woman in pain while another woman was chanting in sermon saying ‘push!’.

That was the moment I was born (although the cries and the flashing lights are a little bit fabricated, of course), and the moment that everything turned to be a written script just like in the movies. Like most kids, I have grown up in the premises of a to-do checklist. I was inducted not upon a second thought in a life-long sketch I have never dreamt while I was a little boy – I wanted to be a doctor, a scientist, an architect and even a singer. None of those seem too feasible. I did not end up loathing; although I made sure that the world understood how wishful and eager I am to have a choice of my own, it was my future after all.

It turned out to be graciously challenging nevertheless. I could only wish it was one of those romantic novels where the character falls in love with the suitor after a long time of courtship. I could not really articulate well if I fell in love with the plan in the long run; it was more of acceptance and contentment that paved my way into being rant-less. Even though half of my consciousness fervently hoped I was in another classroom discussing something else than microchips and counting binary numbers, I still rode the wagon. Ironically, I did a pretty good job in placing an ace on my exam papers, earning my name in the dean’s list and even placing fourth during my commencement. This was no longer a scuffle of what I really wanted to do in the long run, but was a battle within myself in the aim of bearing out that if I can’t work for the situation, I can let the situation work for me. Ergo, the willpower to do excellently at something I never even liked from the start.

To date, the ripples of the water slowly went to a rest while the picture beneath has started to be apparent.. Not that I wholly and irrevocably understand now, but at the slightest, I get to esteem why things had to happen even without my consensus accord.

Sometimes, I still daydream about the what-if’s given that I got the chance to choose a path of my own. But those daydreams have awakened me in that imaginary state of perception. Nobody said it was too late to get the ball in the ring!

Soon after I woke up knowing that the ball is actually on my hands, I spoke to myself with utmost conviction, ‘It’s time to play my game.’ I want to live with adventures, see the world and store memories in photographs, I want to be driven with my passion to speak, be heard and share my thoughts. These were I, growing up. I wanted to be dynamic and to be dynamic I shall be.

I started to endow in photography, something I have always wished for as I started to be a photojournalist at the age of 11. I started to play my fingers again with words as I have been mocking to be a real writer since I was 13. I started seeing the world as I was born with a mole on my right foot.

I motionlessly hoisted an online journal reviving the wanderings I have had taken in action and mind adventures such as what you are reading. I started to enroll myself in Spanish classes in my passion for a multi-cultural environment. I plunged myself into books on medical and surgical nursing, pharmacology and other medical literatures. I was unhurriedly pulling everything I admire doing - at my own pace, at my own time. I was seeing the world from where I stand and this is all I ever wanted. 

It was then that I woke up to the thought that no one is really a victim of fate or destiny. A few things may still be a sheer product of luck but at the every cell of life, we build the blocks that make us whole. 

I encourage everyone who was left in the belief that life has lived on us, because we should live on life. You have to take a moment and figure where you are what you need to do, and on top of those are the things you want to. Play the cards. No excuses, just do it. 

Live in the real world, but live in your dreams as well.

If it weren't for the fixtures which my life has started with, I would have never valued what it meant to actually live a life and I would have never learned how to design a path I would want to walk through, regardless if this life has been pre- designed or not. We are not governed by the world’s mundane necessities. Feel free to be lost. No one's really stopping you but yourself. Never would I imagine using this but yes, I am saying it anyway, You Only Live Once. Live well!