Learning to love through loss. Seeking warm pockets in the bitter cold. Finding the worth of a smile on a cloudy day. Carrying the weight of the world on weary shoulders—mistakes, sins, injustices—added upon daily. Enduring burdens that spur greater strength.
This is life.
Sorting through layers of expressions staring you straight in the eye. A battle to be right when wrong, to be good when bad, to be content when in need, and to laugh when tearing up.
This is life.
Valuing things of no worth. Reevaluating dreams. Laboring ceaselessly against the current. Seeing less, wanting more, having enough.
This is life.
Chasing the moon when the sun would extend its warmth. Slapping the hand that would offer a gentle caress. Cowering at personal, monstrous shadows. Giving and taking in unbalanced weights. Diminishing the majesty of mountains in order to form our own lowly hills. Hoping for more than we deserve.
This is life.
Hurting. Despairing. Losing. Weeping. Suffering. Laboring. Sinking. Mourning. Appreciating with greater capacity and sincerity a learned knowledge that these adversities do have their opposites.
This is life.
A taste. A revelation. A banishment. A mercy. A test. An experience. A turbulent sea-voyage that shall assuredly reach the unseen shore, making seasoned sailors of us all.
This is life. 
"You were born and with you endless possibilities, very few ever to be realized. It's okay. Life was never about what you could do, but what you would do. "
"Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself."
"To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all."
"There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle."
"In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on."
"Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened."
"So, this is my life. And I want you to know that I am both happy and sad and I'm still trying to figure out how that could be."
"You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough."
"Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans."
“Life is a test. It was designed to be so. It is where we taste the bitter and the sweet; where we feel pain and pleasure; where we learn right from wrong; where we pass through both darkness and light. It is a time to make choices. And through this process we form our characters—some grand and glorious, some barely decent, and others just plain monstrous.”
