Born Today?
A reading for your birthday. Leo season.
Instead of possibilities, I have realities in my past, not only the reality of work done and of love loved, but of sufferings bravely suffered. These sufferings are even the things of which I am most proud, though these are things which cannot inspire envy.
Viktor E. Frankl
There are parts of your life you have been holding together that no one ever asked you to hold, and no one will thank you for keeping steady. You picked up this weight because someone had to, or because you were the one who saw it first, or because walking away felt impossible even when staying felt unreasonable. The cost of carrying what was never formally yours is that you cannot put it down without feeling like you are abandoning something essential. But the deeper cost is that you have been so busy keeping everything else upright that you forgot to ask what you actually wanted to build with your own hands. The year ahead is the one that finally distinguishes between what you chose and what chose you, and asks whether the thing you have been carrying is still the thing that needs carrying.