I’m still in the afterglow of Ke Huy Quan and Michelle Yeoh’s Oscar wins, especially Ke Huy Quan’s . There’s so much to relate to when it’s comes to Ke’s story and the comeback of his career that the Oscar win seems to represent. We all struggle in our lives at some point or another, maybe experience our own version of “Everything, Everywhere, All at Once” where our life feels overwhelming and chaotic and at other times, when we find ourselves stagnant in our lives and wonder if there is more to what it can be and how did we get here?! We can never quite know how one experience we’re having will affect our future. We’re usually too close to the present to have the full perspective of seeing the impact of our actions.

How many of us believe we are pawns of a great omnipotent puppeteer who move us around with ridiculous actions and in directions that we have no control over? It’s easier to believe you have no agency especially when it’s not successful as you imagined it should be than it is to accept responsibility for your bad decisions. Carl Jung believed that, “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” So the great secret is the puppeteer behind the great curtain is actually us.

Of course, it’s only a secret when you feel like the victim. But when you take responsibility for your own life for all experiences that you are part of, you become the architect and creator of your live. Most of the time unfortunately, we are unconscious of why we do what we do. And then we wonder how we got to be where we are.

We can only do our best by taking steps towards our desired outcome and hold on to faith that we’re going in the right direction. When things go well for us, it’s easy to keep our equanimity but when they don’t, we can either fall victim to despair or have the awareness to use the opportunity to practice meditation. We can stop, take a breath, and create the opportunity to take a look around and see where exactly where we are.

For as long as we’re breathing, we’re alive and there still can be opportunity for change if we take it. But patience is required because most changes take time to coalesce and produce the outcome we want. Along the way, we may not be able to see quite how the dots are all connected, and we may encounter challenges that threaten to discourage and derail us. What we think is failure in that moment in time, may just be a pause in the story that is still being written. That “failure” may well weave another beautiful thread in the tapestry of our life. The biggest travesty is when we simply get bored with the mundane tasks of anything that rand quit and move on to the next idea.

Our main task in life is to pay attention to what is happening around us, to remain curious, and to ask questions. It sounds easy but for me, it’s an intentional practice that I have to continue reminding myself to do. It takes practice to pay attention to what’s happening, to listen to what’s being said, to be here in this moment. There is so much distraction around us, so many trivial things that keep us so busy. I used to try to multi-task and would have a bunch of assignments in front of me. As a result, I would take more time trying to reorient myself to each task and I felt like a failure at the end of the day, when I realized that I only completed one or two things from my long list and doing nothing substantial. I decided one day to just accept that I have difficulty concentrating on more than one task at hand. Now I just concentrate on one task at a time and when I get them done, I have a sense of accomplishment.

Another situation is where I really enjoy writing but I’m so drowsy by the end of the day that I fall asleep at my keyboard. I was starting to wonder why I even bothered writing – I jumped to the conclusion that that I had nothing to write about, that I had nothing to share that would any value to anyone else’s life. So I stopped writing until I watch the Oscar’s and witnessed the wins of Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan. I realized I gave up partly because I didn’t create the right conditions for me to want to sit down and write and that I was resisting my body’s limits.

So I stopped writing late at night and started waking up an hour earlier to write.

I don’t know why I’ve been fighting against myself. I just wasn’t paying enough attention or asking the right questions. So simple! But maybe not so easy. Evidently.