The Pivot Year

by Brianna Wiest

Happiness is not having the best of everything, but the ability to make the best of anything. Happiness is knowing you are doing what you can with what you were given. Happiness is not something that comes to you when every problem is solved and all things are perfectly in place, but in the shining silver linings that remind us the light of day is always there, if you slow down enough to notice.

If you are going to give your energy to anything, give it to what’s already working. To the people who already love you, to the things that show potential, to the places that make you feel more alive.

Rather than spending more of your time trying to work through your conceptual self, move out of your head and touch your life. Do just one thing differently than you did before. Care for yourself in the quietest, most intimate ways. Your idea of yourself will reform as you give yourself solid, undeniable, consistent proof that you are different than you once believed yourself to be.

We don’t have to grieve what we think the world took, but to remember that whatever beauty we grew within our lives is still within us—and wherever we go, and whatever we do next, we will grow it there, too. Everything that’s truly meant for you will be waiting for you on the other side, because everything that’s truly meant for you is still within you. It always has been.

It is your duty to see the best within yourself, because those that are aware of their own love, who believe in their own selves—they move through life differently. They are kinder, and more whole. They are more forgiving and more accepting and more willing to learn, to empathize, and to find strength. Whatever goodness you believe the world is missing is probably equivalent to a level of love resting dormant within you. Uncover it. Set it free.

An honest heart is rare. A heart that is willing to be earnest, and sincere. A heart that is strong enough to keep loving, no matter how many times it has been bruised. Irony and cynicism are shields, a way to laugh off your life so that it cannot truly touch you. This slowly ices you out to your own experience until one day you wake up and realize you are surrounded but lonely, busy but disengaged. If you want a full life you have to be willing to open yourself to it. Let it all in and let it move you. Let it change you. Let it free you and let it make you feel again. Let what’s heavy hurt and what’s healing lighten, and let yourself move through it all without getting too attached. You’re here for a reason, and an understanding of that reason can only be dissected through your experience.

Some of the very best parts of your life begin to flow right after you give up. After you give up on trying to be someone you’re not, in placing other people’s opinions higher than your own. After you stop trying to live out the plan that you have outgrown, after you stop trying to make the wrong pieces fit. Sometimes, holding on isn’t about muscling through, but knowing what you are meant to release along the way.

You have no idea how not alone you are. You have no idea how many other people walk through this world with similar thoughts, and fears. How many people have felt the sinking, crashing weight of heartbreak, the hope of the future, wondering if they did it all wrong. The optics can be deceiving. It is easy to feel alone. You are not alone. You have no idea how not alone you are.

You have to decide what you’re willing to miss out on. Will you be the artist missing nights of sleep, working after their day job? Will you miss being out with your friends, will you miss your potential, will you miss the world, will you miss the safe space you’ve called home? The truth is that every decision comes with a parallel sacrifice of some sort, something you won’t know and can’t know. As much as you have to decide what’s worth trying for, you also have to decide what’s worth letting go of.

You don’t have to figure your entire life out today. Show up a little more as the person you want to be. Tomorrow, do it again.

I hope you will take nothing for granted—no lesson, no person, no place. I hope you will see that everything was a teacher, even the most unlikely of experiences was in some way there to guide your path. I hope you will have faith in the fact that everything that’s meant for you will find you, remain with you, or return to you. It is only a matter of when. I hope you will realize that when you ask for a bigger experience, you’ll first be handed the lessons that will grow you into the type of person who can have that life you envision. I hope you’ll begin to see the purpose in what’s seemed meaningless. I hope you’ll never lose faith that your happy ending is still there, still waiting.

The people who have not yet come to see their own envy as a signal to the spaces in which they are destined to excel will see your growth as a threat. Grow anyway. The people who have not yet reconciled their desire for deep change in life will see your changes through only the lens of fear. Change anyway. The people who have not yet found their voices will think yours is too loud. Speak anyway. The people who have not yet healed their wounds will find your wholeness naive. Rejoice anyway.