We’re All Just Trying

We live in a concrete jungle where everyone is trying to find their place. In office buildings you are expected to fit into a chain. In friend groups, social circles and apartment societies, there is always this subtle pressure to survive, to stand apart or at least to do something that proves you belong.

And no matter where you go, someone is watching. Someone is judging your choices, action or even your silence.

Why is life designed this way. Why is survival such a constant negotiation. I read an animated comic about Charles Darwin as a teenager, yet I never truly understood what survival of the fittest felt like until adulthood.

Everywhere around us, someone is fighting for something essential. One person fights for rights. Another fights for respect at work. Someone is resisting unwarranted prejudice. Another is battling a society just to let their dog into their own home.

Where does this entitlement come from. What gives people the belief that they can intrude into another person’s life or dictate how they should live.

One moment you are calm with a cup of tea and your own thoughts. The next you are overwhelmed by anger or sadness triggered by something far beyond you. A tragic news break. A disaster. A crime. A story of loss. We are constantly surrounded by narratives that carry so much emotional weight that it becomes impossible to know how to feel or where to place those feelings.

Some days you do not need validation from anyone. The very next day you crave the smallest form of reassurance, from someone you love or even from a stranger.

Some mornings you wake up grateful for life. On other mornings you are so weary that the idea of disappearing, like “Johatsu” — the quiet Japanese idea of vanishing overnight, feels oddly comforting.

Life moves in extremes.

Some days are like summer, warm and long and full of energy.
Some days are like winter, slow and cozy and sometimes entirely at our own pace.

Sometimes you love someone deeply. At other times you feel resentment toward the same person with equal intensity.

In one part of the world, there are creatures like us. In another, there are beings so strange and beautiful, like eels with extra sets of pharyngeal teeth, that you begin to question the logic of evolution itself. Everything in nature is so different and so fascinating, yet we humans insist on giving everything a meaning.

They say everything in the universe comes in pairs. Only now do I understand that this idea shows up everywhere in life.
Joy and exhaustion.
Hope and disappointment.
Certainty and doubt.

We are not taught how to navigate any of it. We simply learn in the process. Sometimes we learn to deal rather than understand. Emotions are fleeting and complex and often too blurred to trace back to anything logical.

It makes me wonder why life has to be so tough. It is tempting to imagine a world where people mind their own business, where there is no malice, where no one feels the constant need to struggle or prove anything.

And then life shows us its rawest form.

A week ago we witnessed death at an uncomfortably close distance. A two week old kitten, left to face the world on its own, was run over inside our apartment complex. We never walk at that time. I had only stopped by a neighbour’s home and that tiny shift in routine placed us exactly where the incident unfolded. The car did not even realise it had hit something. We stood there watching the kitten take its last breath.

Two days later we went to a clinic for my Vitamin D injection. A woman rushed in crying for help. She was young, maybe in her early thirties. Her husband had fainted in the apartment opposite ours. They brought him to the hospital within minutes. He was pronounced dead soon after.

It struck us then. Life ends in an instant. It disappears before you can understand what is happening. We do not know when our end arrives, or how. We do not always know what we look forward to or what we leave behind.

Yet the world continues to feel complex. People continue to chase validation or success or superiority. We continue to feel emotions without knowing why. And sometimes we do not understand why we must live through so much difficulty or what the point of standing out is.

But witnessing those moments changed something. Every passing moment felt suddenly precious. Maybe this experience will shape the way we see life. Maybe it will not. What we do know is this. We do not have to take life so seriously.

We don’t have to solve every feeling or understand every struggle.
We don’t have to prove our worth to the world or perform stability when we’re exhausted. Some days, doing our best looks like showing up.
Other days, it looks like resting and letting the world move without us.

Maybe the basic expectation of humanity isn’t survival at all.
Maybe it’s learning to soften in a world that keeps hardening us.
Maybe it’s choosing kindness even when everything feels unfair.
Maybe it’s paying attention — to ourselves, to each other, to the small fragile moments that slip between the chaos.

And perhaps, the most practical thing we can do is
live gently, while we’re still here.
Not because it makes us exceptional, but because it makes us human.