Peederrrrrrrrrrrr.

I think the important lesson to be learnt is that shit happens. You rarely get what you think you deserve and your hopes and dreams often come crashing down upon you. I feel miserable. I feel bitter. I feel like I deserve better. But what use will all that negative emotion do? Shit happens, and many a time whatever shit happens, it’s usually permanent. I can’t change anything.

But the thing is, I can sit here and wallow knee deep in my self-pity and get bashed deeper into the ground or I can stay defiant to the very end. Life will beat you to your knees, but that doesn’t mean you can’t hit back. Failure is just a temporary setback. Someday, I’ll look back and laugh, because I’d have overcome all of this bullshit.

Shit happens, doesn’t it? But I only live once and I refuse to go down without a fight. We’ve got ourselves a game.

You have experienced hardship and joy and all sorts of trials and tribulations, but the fact remains that you are but a hatchling - foolish and brash. You know little and have seen only a tiny corner in the bigger picture that is life.

You have grown much in these few years and you are not who you used to be; the very core of your being has inexorably been altered by the rush of time and you have metamorphosed into someone else. Yet wisdom eludes you and maturity always remains a hairsbreadth out of reach.

The smell of freshly cut grass and the cries of children playing around you. Warm nostalgia fills your bones, but you are no longer part of this picture. Swept ceaselessly toward some indistinct point in the future, you have no time to mingle in the past. Perhaps you feel as if you are being forced to grow up too fast, but you don’t know for sure, for the sun is fast on the horizon and a new dawn approaches.

It would seem as if I have forgotten myself yet again. Well it isn’t too late; it never is, for as long as there is life within me, there is a chance for me to set things right and live my life to its fullest.

I pledge to live with passion, to do what I love and love what I do. I pledge to be optimistic and to try my best to always be happy. I pledge to do what I can with what I have been given. I pledge to create and love. I pledge to make every repetition, every set, every stroke and every training count. I pledge to fight for the impossible. I pledge to dream big and stay lean and hungry. Most of all, I pledge to be myself.

I have been blessed with life and it is my duty to cherish it.