It’s almost midnight and the day is slowly saying its goodbye before it comes again. A feeling of relief and an unraveling excitement creeps in as tomorrow is the official start of a very brief and very needed school break. But first, let’s hit the rewind button <<<

I spent this day typing. Analyzing speeches for a class and learning a whole lot from people and their stories. Each speech was remarkable to say the least and they got me thinking about things like choice, craziness, and faith - three words that probably shouldn’t even be in the same sentence. I had been thinking about this since they were highlighted in my previous and current read and now, I finally get to tell you my take on those three as the inspiration candle has officially been lit.

There’s a movie, Trainspotting - one of the best I’ve ever seen. If you’ve watched it, you’d know why I’m not going to go very much into some of the details because it is well… a lot. This film was quite controversial but beneath what is explicitly shown, there’s a particularly interesting layer that invokes the question: what happens if you don’t choose life?

To explain this, I’ll hand you some context: the film revolves around a heroin addict, Renton and his friends. He did not choose life for all the reasons one wouldn’t want to aka responsibilities, responsibilities and more responsibilities. As you can imagine, this didn’t go so great and he ended up understanding that if you don’t choose life, you choose stagnancy. The only thing we really know about choice is that it has an outcome. Whether good or bad, something will come out of it. This was the common denominator in every speech I analyzed today and that brings me to my own written vent: a step forward.

There’s nothing quite unsettling than not knowing what comes next. Uncertainty can be mean and laugh at your face when you try to decipher it. That is why people always recommend to not play its game so they say stuff like: don’t stress on what you can’t control, let it be, let it go etc. What you can control is response- your response. In Trainspotting, Renton thought he was in control by not choosing life and getting high every chance he got - but self-control goes away when addiction is involved. His resistance was not out of self-control but out of being controlled by something else. Once uncertainty is perceived as terrifying, it becomes an excuse to do everything else but have faith that the puzzle all comes together at some point. When you’re blindfolded, you can’t see, but that doesn’t take away your ability to do everything else - and ladies and gentlemen, that right there is where the inevitable turning point is located.

The reason you’re blindfolded is likely because a choice lead you there. However, when you get there, another choice is to be made: to remain or to take a step. Whether you take a step back or forward is up to you but the important bit is a step was taken. The other option is choosing stagnancy - something debatable because doing nothing also involves an action word, it's still doing something. The outcome may not reveal itself immediately but it always reveals itself, so as everyone likes to say: no stressin’, there quite literally is no need. Ahh, there goes the calm down sensation…

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