Don't Wish Luck
"Don’t wish people luck. Wish patience and strength. Wish discipline and the ability of getting up when their alarm goes off. Wish power to do and power to make, that’s what it takes to achieve things."
Forever 21 top // Nastygal vest // Topshop jeans //
shoes // Forever 21 hat
They say you don't realize how small your life is compared to the millions of lives out in the world until you truly understand the stories they live. Or something to that effect. The point is, each life is pretty insignificant relative to the immeasurable whole. And it's a concept surprisingly overlooked by many until they learn about someone else's life and truly put themselves in foreign shoes. It makes you wonder how little we can feel yet still absorb a passionate connection to something so removed from our own lives. It's a beautiful fulfillment that makes you appreciate how we're all hanging from a fragile thread, so gossamer but intriguingly secure.
I cam across one of these stories about someone I knew but was never close with. I just happened to be in the right place at the right time. It was a story of such delicate webbing that it almost felt wrong to hear--like my irrelevant ears were unworthy of its deepening truth. As I heard more of the story, its anecdote drafting with reality, I was falling significantly bound and drawing unusual attachment to this distant person. I felt for her deeply, as if she was akin to my own. And then I felt small, but not in the sense of invaluableness. I felt small because previously, I had always thought my story had to be shared for people to truly understand me, but now I've learned that there are stories out there yearning to be heard but are too scared of evolving in the light. It was sensationally unraveling to become internally aware of this bigger world; I was taken back by how minuscule my life really was. I wanted to learn more of this person and familiarize myself with the strange mystery of it all. I felt more concerned for her troubles than for my own and that's when I knew what it meant to appreciate life in its entirety--not of my own, but of the interconnectedness of each other's.
We walk around and about each other, aware of the surrounding presences, unassumingly avoiding contact. Our intentions are timid and respectable but that's all we limit ourselves to--we don't pry in each other's lives, we don't wonder or get curious. We keep a safe distance from being too involved because that's the socially appropriate paradigm, meticulously treading a fluctuant balance. And though we are better off not poaching for personal details, we forget that each one of us is burdening a heavier story. But we forget even more that we want our stories to be heard, if not acknowledged.
Photography by Lynn Kim Do of