Living Life - Unreasonably, Unapolagetically, Unwaveringly

This isn’t the easiest thing to do

I really wanted to get this post out before 2025 ended. But getting this piece out in time was hard.

Not because I was busy. Not because life got in the way. Not because the goings got tough.

But because 2025 was a year where I truly embraced the idea that there can be an infinite amount of truths at once — and they can all persist at the same time. Distilling so many incoherent, contradicting, incongruent views of reality into a single post felt impossible. I struggled with trying to find a single narrative that I can tease out from my confluence of a year. I really did.

Perhaps the best kinds of stories are ones where all perspectives are allowed to coexist at once. And that is the thread that I will use for this post, written in 2026, serving as my barometer for existence.

Aim to live life once, fully, unapolagetically.

We are but narratives of our own reality

2025 was a year of unprecedented personal progress, but also a year of deep personal lows.

My career took off in a direction that finally made meaningful sense to me. I’m finally able to apply leverage to my skillset in a way that I can honestly say reduces world suck.

I have an ample amount of time to be around the people I love and who love me. I was able to spare no expense in telling people they matter to me — emotionally, verbally, physically, financially, and I hope, thoughtfully.

I care a lot less about being in public now, social anxiety be damned.

I’m physically active again, more fit than I have ever been.

I travelled more than I thought I would — nine countries, eleven trips overseas — and have had experiences that once felt impossible.

I’ve picked up new hobbies, rekindled old ones, reconnected with old friends, and made some amazing new ones. The people who constantly remind me that I should choose to stay in this life.

I also took out a loan for a house on my birthday, so I am now in debt.

For once I feel like I can see the joys of life for the way they are.

Perhaps we arrive at heaven when we are born.

But, the first half of the year came with two heartbreaks.

“That’s a lot of breakups, actually!”, a certain someone once said in a docuseries.

Anxiety, fear, doubt and personal trauma got the better of me at times. A few weeks in July were spent just lying in bed, doing nothing. Therapy helped loads and I am eternally grateful to have such access to it.

To anyone in similar situations, know that even the bravest of us will take the knee sometimes. But it is very important that you get up. You may fall again. But get up again anyway. Please. And again. At the expense of whatever tools you have access to — get up.

I consumed a lot of personal fuel at work this year. There’s a lot more where it came from and I can do this all day, everyday. But the results sometimes feel… mediocre, even if I am told otherwise.

I still wonder if I am meant to be doing what I am meant to be doing; if the ceiling was high enough; if I am truly growing my skillset in a direction that feels aligned. But I also have faith that I am meant to be in this exact coordinate in space-time.

I’ve gained some new friends but have definitely lost a significant number too. Some through rough patches. Some through the shockwaves. Some through distance. If any of these are you and you feel compelled to reach out — the door is always open.

Despair deserves no monopoly on wisdom.

Emotions are just your evolved biology of predicting the future from the current circumstance — it is usually wrong.

Time is measured by the memories we remember, not by the seconds that drift by.

The true winners are the ones who recognize the game for what it is, and make the conscious decision to step away from it.

Perfection is someone else's idea of what you should like.

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Life this year felt less about building potential, but about gaining momentum. If you saw me having fun, you would never know how riddled with doubt and fear I can be. If you saw me silently crying somewhere, you’d never know life was going great. I can be exhausted by life while doing something joyful, and deeply grateful in times of absolute disaster.

The narrative of life is that everything can be true at once. The magnitude and angle of our emotions are merely projections of the story we tell ourselves. Things are both a lot better and a lot worse than we think it is. And that’s okay.^*

Reality doesn’t care for our lives, but we must. The juxtaposition of existing in between everything and nothing is, at times, mesmerizingly beautiful.

Aim to be your own main character. No one is going to do that for you.

Aim not for safety, but against the risk of not aiming higher

If I had to sum up 2025. It was the year of finding stable ground to tread on. The year of making sure the ground didn’t shudder. The year of avoiding pitfalls and ensuring safe fallbacks.

At times, life felt a little too comfortable. Sometimes the rhythm of everything being okay starts feeling like something’s missing. But you go along with it because that’s how everyone seems to live. Get through the weekday so you get to have the weekend.

The more I do this, the more I realize that is not how I want to live. It’s not how younger me imagined me now. It’s not how present me imagines the future.

Stability isn’t the goal — it’s the foundation.

The common practice is not always the practical practice.

Despite what everyone tells us, we’re so often made to feel like the future is something that we can get wrong. The worst part is we’re so often unsure about the emotion of wanting something that feels real. No one really cares that we don’t have the answers, and yet we do.

Not because it really matters — we know it doesn’t. We care simply because we just don’t have it yet.

So we pick something that feels right and say it. We smile when we don’t mean it. Act sure when we’re not. Especially, when we’re not.

This used to feel wrong. Now I am learning that these moments are important. They challenge you to live a life you actually care about. That act is a physical manifestation of a soul willing to risk being wrong — against itself and against the world.

And once in awhile, emotion, thought, and action align. And everything feels right. And you feel invincible. And you realize you never needed the answers to begin with.

So aim higher, the delusion will always be worth it.

The meaning of life is to give life meaning.

If you want to live a life where you're excited to win, figure out what winning first looks like for you.

Intrinsic motivation will feel like you're rocket powered; extrinsic motivation means you're constantly playing catch up.

The tragedy of life is not that it is short, but that we take so long to begin.

Gain traction without dopamine and make progress without announcement.

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” Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable ones adapt the world to themselves. Therefore, all progress depends entirely on the unreasonable. “ — George Bernard Shaw

I’m bracing myself with equal parts excitement and fear to do something completely out of left field in 2026. And if you’re reading this — I’m rooting for you too.

Sekian.

You get way less chances to be kind than to be mean, choose wisely.

Every instance of love ends in grief. Whether a spouse dies, a relationship ends, or a situationship going sour. Grief is normal, don't pre-celebrate it.