Life is short just as much as it is long, as happy as it is sad and as unpredictable as it is foreseeable. Some call this balance, some call it an unfortunate chain of events. I guess no one truly grasps the concept of life even though we are all living it. We may not be able to understand everything and know everything but we hold the power of how we paint this magical occurrence we call life.

People always say that a certain situation changed them, for better or worse. They say that if you have the same mindset throughout your whole life, you are not doing it right. And what we hear the most is that disappointments and heartbreaks make you lose hope. “Why” is the question. It all comes crushing down, our beliefs, morals and even the understanding of happiness itself. But life must go on, so we continue, holding on and carrying this grief and sadness in a place hidden from everyone else. Unfortunately, there is no limit to these occurrences that feed the sorrow and pain we feel. Slowly and almost unnoticeably we give in. The world around us starts to fade and lose its colors. What was once bright, loses its lights. What we once found amusing, lost its charm. What we once thought was worth fighting for, we now see as worthless. Life itself becomes gray, gloomy and tasteless. We are now stuck in a loop where no matter who we talk to and what we do, at the end of the day it is like it never happened. With no place to escape this misery and not enough spark to get us through, we face the silence and darkness known as numbness. But even in that miserable silence, we hear a beat, familiar yet distant. A beat reminding us that we are alive. That even if we give up, it will never stop beating, giving us not a second, not a third but a millionth chance to enjoy life. Our heart. Yes, we are human. Yes, our emotions sometimes are stronger than we can comprehend. Yes, life can be harsh, sad, even disgusting, but we are the ones in charge. Yes, there is so much darkness but there is even more light, there is so much pain but behind every corner, there is happiness, joy and LOVE waiting to be felt, there is so much that can break us but also so much that can give us the strength we never thought we could bear. If there is a way down there is always a way up. It is never easy, it will never be, but we were made for this, exactly this, a world that can lose its color and gain it back as fast as it lost it. It is not always clear what we should do, what is the right thing, what is the safest option or the road to happiness. It is so easy to give up. We get hurt, betrayed and broken. Life can be black. But also, it can be so much more. It can be happy, surprising, warm. Its beauty lies in every smile, tear and laugh, every sunrise, sunset as well as the darkness of the night, every song, movie and book, every friend, every kiss and hug, every unexplored place, untasted food and never before heard song, every adventure and memory. Its strength lies in the rhythm of every beating heart.

What so many people fail to realize is that we are the painters of the world. We are the artists and our life is our canvas. We have every color available, our job is to choose which one we want to use. It may never turn up the way we expect or even want, we could potentially choose the wrong one and pain the wrong outcome, but the true beauty in art is that we can always start over with a blank canvas, this time choosing different colors, ones that make us delighted. It’s up to us to understand that if we can feel despair so strongly, we can perceive pleasure just as strongly if not stronger. There will always be that special color, brushstroke and shade guiding us. At the end of the day, everything is a little better with some color in it.

                                                                                         Ana-Marija Pejchinovska