How does it feel to devote your hard work, your precious time, your hopes on a project for a significant duration, only to never realize your dream?
I feel stupid, that I wasn’t far-sighted enough to measure the cost-to-benefit ratio.
I feel ignorant, to have kept procrastinating moving on to other possibilities in life.
Isn’t this feeling also true sometimes for long term relationships we hold on to? Long term partners, friends, careers. You get into something thinking you might be able to make it. You refuse to give up at the first sign of failure or difficulty.
You fail again. You get up.
The cycle goes on, and you keep telling yourselves we will see the light at the end of this tunnel.
But will you, really?
What decides the line between resilience and giving up for good?
Am I enduring pain to reach the finish line tomorrow? Or am I slowly driving a knife into the heart of my dream, deluding myself that attaining a compromise will hold the same meaning?
The following lyrics from Michael Jackson’s “Stranger in Moscow” song come to mind1:
How does it feel?
How does it feel?
How does it feel?
When you’re alone
And you’re cold inside.
This conundrum is something we all face at different points, in different situations. So we understand the feeling. However, what I think is not very nice is undermining the weight of this feeling, simply because “everyone is going through this, you are not the only one”.
Sometimes, we need to make time. To feel the pain, the failure, the hurt. Not to pity ourselves. But to acknowledge the loss of something precious and to reflect how to not encounter the same pitfalls in the future. There is no one solution to the infinite problems in life.
Maybe a hug will calm her down? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Image credit to yours truly.
Written on 19th March 2026, posted on 5th April 2026.