Here’s Your Reminder To Keep Going

This is for everyone who’s tired and wants to stop.

I understand that sometimes existence in itself is already exhausting, but please continue. Please keep going.

Because you can.

When we were young, we dreamed big. We believed beyond our limitations and we ran towards the horizon of possibilities. The blood that coursed through our veins was electric; we felt invincible, undefeated. Although we stumbled and fell, we always found ways to stand right back up and fight. We lived day by day as if we were unbreakable, because we felt that time was ever ahead of us.

But as we grew older, we started making smart decisions. Our confidence started depending on how we planned the details of our future and calculated our actions. Yet one day, we woke up and none of these things were useful in the slightest. One day we woke up with our plans destroyed and with the overwhelming feeling that our lives were shattered.

And after we have seen our plans and calculations fail us, after we have seen life’s circumstances shatter the future we have carefully planned and predicted, we slowly learned our lessons the hardest ways. This was when we experienced pain from truths we learned along the way.

Truths like sometimes believing isn’t always enough. Truths like loving truly doesn’t always make relationships last. Truths like hard work doesn’t always pay off. In this phase, all we knew was fear. We almost never took risks anymore. We claimed to be wiser, but really, we knew so little of what this life held for us.

Yet in life, we continue. We continue living because our lives, our experiences, only make sense with what we make of them. We continue because somehow, somewhere inside of us, there’s this younger version of ourselves to whom we always come back whenever we forget who we are, where we are, and why are we even doing what we do.

We continue because that’s what we do, right? We keep going even if it hurts, we keep going even when we no longer understand, we keep loving even after it breaks us over and over in different ways yet with the same face of pain.

We keep going in this life of uncertainties, even as outcomes unfold into forms we have never predicted. We keep pushing forward in circumstances we never imagined, let alone prepared for. We refuse to see the end as we wade through the complexities of life.

In life, as we continue, it’s almost incomprehensible just how we witness ourselves conquer battle after battle. Often, we tell ourselves, “One more and I’m giving up. One more and that’s it.” However, at the end of the day, we surprise everyone, including our own selves, in how we rise above situations we once thought we could never see through.

We say, “I give up,” but we never really do.

As we keep going, it’s crucial to acknowledge that these are momentous victories that we often undermine or even forget. But let this be a reminder of how much you have been winning in life amidst failures and setbacks.

“Keep going” is not a mere act of continuance.

“Keep going” is strength and endurance.

“Keep going” is already winning.

We keep going because it’s the most human thing to do, and most importantly, because we can.