A Working Theory of My Life

This year has not been easy for me. Starting early this year, I kept wondering what the actual meaning of my life is.

If you ask my friends, they’d probably say I’m a generally happy person — and I think that’s true. For a long time, I unconsciously chased happiness. I wanted to collect beautiful moments, stay in them, and feel that joy as much as possible.

But I started to notice that even in my happiest moments, there was always a quiet sadness underneath. On vacation with my best friend, or sharing a beautiful evening together, a small part of me was already grieving the fact that the moment would soon be over. The happier I felt, the more painful it became, because I knew how much I’d miss it later. After feeling this so many times, I started to wonder: what’s the point of feeling happy in the first place, if I know it will end soon and I’ll feel so sad missing it afterward? That’s when I realized maybe my life goal shouldn’t simply be “be happy.”

Once I gave up chasing happiness, I started wondering what the actual meaning of my life — and of those good moments — really was.

So first, at least I know this: I have to define the meaning of my own life. No one cares more about my life than I do. If I try to find meaning only through other people, external achievements, or the world’s expectations, it will never truly belong to me, and I will never feel genuinely happy. Life doesn’t come with a predefined meaning — we create meaning through the way we choose to live. Okay, if you agree with me, let’s move on.

If I have to define my goal, I think the process goes like this:

• I want to have inner peace.
• I think inner peace only comes when you know what you want, and what you don’t want.
• In order to know what I want, I need to fully experience things first — then I’ll know if I like something or not.
• So I need to be able to experience all aspects of life, to live my life to the fullest.

I want to live my life to the fullest (here I recommend the song Vivir Mi Vida). I want to be free enough to explore the world with an open heart. To me, freedom doesn’t mean having no responsibilities — it means being able to experience the world fully without being constantly limited by my own fears, insecurities, and boundaries. Only then can I truly see the world as it is and decide what I genuinely want — and don’t want — in my life. And I’ll finally have inner peace, no matter what happens outside of me. I’ve seen many limitations within myself, mostly worries and fears, that keep me from even stepping into certain parts of life. So I want to slowly unlock those parts of myself.

When I rethink everything I’ve experienced, good or bad, none of it feels wasted or truly regretted, because I was always left with something afterward. These experiences exist either to free me a little from my limitations, or to help me know myself better.

I remember how going to dance socials filled me with joy and gradually strengthened my resolve to make dancing a lifelong part of my life. I remember talking to a friend about a bad experience from my early years and being healed by her kind, powerful words. Vacations with a best friend made me feel more connected to her, leaving me with good memories that carry me through hardships. Some experiences are just as valuable for what they rule out — I tried new sports and discovered, without much grief, that some simply weren’t mine to keep. So a conversation ends, a vacation with friends ends, a relationship ends — but endings don’t erase them. Their value is that after experiencing them, I always become someone slightly different: more free, more courageous, more connected to my friends, and more aware of who I am. I like to think of people as machine learning models, and our experiences as the training data that shapes us. Everything we experience becomes part of us. The moment disappears, but the transformation remains as the weight of my model. We carry our past wounds, our trauma, the painful things that happened to us — but we also carry our happiness, our friendships, our love, our inspirations.

Once I settled on this point, I stopped experiencing that sadness — or if I do feel sad, I remind myself that something inside me is changing, and that change will stay with me forever. So I’ve started fully embracing the present, and getting excited about what it will change in me, or leave me with, afterward. I’m pretty happy my logic holds together here — it makes me happy again.

Earlier in this passage, I mentioned that my life goal is to finally have inner peace. But I know people are so different, and everyone has a different answer for what they want in life. I’m always curious about how people see their own lives, and what motivates them to show up every day. People may be driven by love, family, creation, helping others, achievement, and so on. Sometimes, when I’m sitting in the lab and start spacing out, I wonder what keeps my labmates, my friends, all these people, showing up every day. But it feels strange to ask someone directly, “Hey, what’s the meaning of your life?” (lol.) So maybe I’ll just keep wondering quietly :)

Again, I hope you have a good day, or a good night.