Inside Out

She asked me to divide my life into sections and rate every section on a scale from 1 to 10. So I started counting: 1. My family, 2. My friends, 3. My work, etc. After I finished, she asked me, “What about your relationship with yourself?” I looked at her for a moment then I said, “It’s a two-way relationship. You see, I am affected by all these sections and I affect them.” But this isn’t how I want it to be.

I remember watching the animation movie Inside Out and loving it so much. But I never really understood it till recently. In the final scene, Riley wasn’t able to return to her parents until she started looking inside herself. Throughout the movie, we see how she reacts to the outside world. This made sadness and anger takeover, till she couldn’t handle them anymore. So she decided to numb all her feelings. It was only on the bus when she started reflecting on her life and looking inside herself that she was able to act, instead of react.

I wanna live my life this way. To become an active participant instead of a passive recipient. I wanna take control of what is in my circle of influence, and accept everything beyond it. There was this TED talk for a fashion designer (or something like that) who told her story: how she went from wearing jumpers and jeans all the time to helping people choose the outfits that best represent them. She said that in the morning when she stands in front of her wardrobe she thinks, “How do I wanna show up in the world today?” I liked her the way she viewed a simple, daily choice; instead of thinking “what do I feel like?” and dressing accordingly (allowing the outside world to affect our choices), we should think instead about the impact we want to create (allowing our choices to affect the outside world).

In another TED talk, a woman was telling the story of her two failed marriages and how her experience has changed her. She tells how she went on a date lately and instead of thinking how to impress the guy she was going out with, she started thinking about how she feels about him. She wasn’t preoccupied with things out of her control. Some might think of this as selfishness, but it is not! I believe that if we don’t take good care of ourselves, we will never be able to add any meaning to the lives of those around us.

I told her that I’ve come to realize that we’re all gonna die and there’s nothing we can do about it. But instead of getting depressed over this fact, we can choose to do something while we are still here. We can “Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” There’s nothing really to lose if we try, but if we chose not to, we’re gonna lose the time we wasted doing nothing. So we better as well live while we’re still alive.