One thing I’ve learned about life is that the everyday struggles are the hardest to deal with. Most of us have big things such as deaths and breakups which take a big toll, but the hardest fight is to keep pushing through the daily stresses and take hit after hit, day after day. We must fall in order to grow and we must lose something in order to truly appreciate it. They say, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” and that’s how I looked at life.

I thought about the battles in my head as real fights. When you learn about battles from history, you don’t learn about who took more punches or foul play or who the soldiers really were; you simply learn about who wins and who loses. We all win, some more than others, and we all lose, sometimes a lot. In the end, however, the real winners are those who stand up after being knocked down, even if it results in another blow.

One of the most unsettling things to deal with is change. High school, paired with moving in with my aunt, was a rollercoaster of emotions and change. Girls, friends, social media, school, sex, drinking, drugs, and mental health issues were my biggest daily struggles. School definitely doesn’t prepare you well enough to succeed in our society, but thankfully I had a few guides.

There is good and bad in everything, however it is often difficult to see. We have stretches of good days and bad days, but there still are a few good or bad moments in between that we forget about. One of the hardest lessons my parents taught me was that there’s usually not going to be anyone or any big thing that swoops in and saves your life. True happiness can only be found by admiring the small things which put a smile on your face.

We get so let down because our expectation of happiness. We see it as this sustained state of good things going on around us, but in reality, life acts more like a wave than a straight line. Most of us don’t get that security of a straightforward, happy life because we live lives that are more alike to rollercoasters. There are ups and downs, hills and valleys, screams of happiness, and screams of terror. When we are experiencing lows, we have to remember that there have been good times in the past and they’ll come again; during good times, we have to recognize that there are bad days to come and we need to cherish every moment fully. The thing about rollercoasters is that they’re fast and the actual experience of the ride is over within two minutes. If you don’t like the ride, you can tell yourself to hang on because it’s only temporary; if you enjoy the ride, then you make the most of every second of it.

Most people never grow out of their egocentric mentality. They live their entire lives caring only about what immediately affects them in a measurable way. At the end of the day we don’t really think about the small gestures people made toward us and the little things they said. We get caught up in our own little worlds and often forget about the humanity of other people. We are selfish, yet we don’t know how to be anything else. Society has trained us to do everything for ourselves and if not for ourselves, then for the people we are closest to. We think only about our lives and forget completely about the fact that others are struggling just as we are.

Some people believe the most important question in life is whether we should kill ourselves or not. Is it worth it to suffer everyday and to never be truly content? Is happiness really attainable? We have no idea why we are alive, if the world is real, if we are real, or if divine beings are real. The only thing we know is that we think and observe. If the world as we know it is an illusion and our seemingly meaningless lives really amount to nothing, you can’t say that we didn’t get lost in the illusion. We are alive and thinking, therefore we are important.

Think about this: if God is real and He created this world, then He would want something to cognitively experience it. If no one is here to see the beauty and destruction of the world, then you wouldn’t be able to say that there is beauty or destruction. If there is no one around to see and hear a tree fall in the woods, then you can’t definitively say that it made a sound. If you’re in a pitch black room, then you won’t know which color the floor is. If God created the world and no one was here to experience life, then how would you prove that the world even exists?

God is the author of every life story and every person is their own main character. When an author writes a book, they have a basic idea of what they want the character to be and go through, but in reality the character creates a space in the author’s brain through which (s)he must think in order to write the story. The character actually has free will in every aspect, although the author influences the vision throughout the story. Every story needs drama, conflict, and something to keep the ball rolling.

For those of us afraid of failure, it’s often difficult to try anything that we might not be good at. Rather than embarrassing ourselves, we simply avoid it. In order to grow, however, we must fall; we subconsciously surround ourselves in environments geared towards our failure simply so that we can get to a point of realization that we want to and can be something more.

It’s hard to find purpose or meaning when you’ve been told your entire life that you can be anything, yet you never seemed to be good enough at any particular thing for anyone. This is due to the fact that your ego actually restricts you from acting on your passions due to the negative reactions you’ve had in the past to them. The ego is basically the reality which your brain conceptualizes to be able to make sense of the world around you. It is filled with countless layers of code which make it possible for you to live without having a mental breakdown.

When we are children, we don’t have the capability of rationalizing abstract concepts, so we adjust our perception based on what we know so that we can have answers. We can’t understand that our parents are having a bad day, so when we don’t get the approval we feel we deserve for the projects we create, the only thing that can make sense to us is that we didn’t achieve at our highest potential and we can do better.

Overall, we gain most of our validation from other people. If you think about it, we simply don’t exist outside our own stories until we are accompanied by someone else. We allow people with clouded judgements and an incomplete perception of the world dictate what we are good at and what makes us happy. We spend our entire lives dying to become part of something bigger and fit as a piece in someone else’s puzzle while in reality we’re all the protagonists in our own coming-of-age novels. The truth is that deep down the person whom you are trying to prove something to is yourself.

In simplest terms, life is a test. We walk into God’s classroom and He hands everyone a sheet of paper with a random array of lines, saying, “Find the answer or make something out of what’s on the paper.” You look around to see everyone just as freaked out as you because what’s on the paper makes absolutely no sense. You try just about everything, but you can’t seem to find a pattern or code hidden anywhere in the lines. With 5 minutes left you finally have an idea and you go for it. Finally, everyone finishes and asks, “What was the answer, God?” He chuckles, then looks back with a face void of expression and responds, “I don’t know; you tell me.”

Everyone starts to freak out and compare answers, but pretty much no one got the same answer. Weeks turn into months as you realize that God is never going to put that test grade in. You begin to furiously question everything, including why you’re so upset about knowing where you fit within someone else’s standards. Finally, you reach a point where you say, “You know what? I was right! There’s absolutely no way that I wasn’t right that was the only thing that actually made any sense!” You live the rest of your life without worrying about what the real answer ever was until you die; then the illusion of reality is lifted and you see the world for what it truly is - an extension of your consciousness.

You ask God why he never gave you the answer and he says, “The whole point was for you to have it make sense to you. If I told you there was no right or wrong answer before the test, then you wouldn’t have tried. If I told you after the test, you would’ve been upset with me and learned nothing. You had to get to a state of confidence within the void of definition and trust in your own intuition.” Figuring out the meanings behind things on your own is always more effective than having it spelled out for you in a way that doesn’t necessarily fit to your collective experiences and environments.

The purpose of life is simply to live. Every individual life is an extension of the higher consciousness itself - God. When we finally die, our deepest internal desires are to feel as if we lived a happy or a meaningful life. We all want to reach our full potential, but even if that doesn’t happen, being content with how your life played out and the relationships you formed will bring you the same wholeness, if not more.

The material wealth you accumulated most likely won’t please you when you finally see what lies ahead after death. You may look back at the experiences you were only able to have due to the money you had, but you won’t care about the money. We see money as happiness because it makes us able to do the things that we want and gives us power, but true happiness comes from bringing a smile upon someone else’s face.

Relationships play a huge role in our lives not only because we are being recognized as a character in someone else’s story, but we can also see a version of ourself that cares for and makes another person happy. The goal, however, is to treat everyone around you as if they are just as integral to your life as your closest friends.

Jesus said to love your neighbor as yourself because he reached a state of consciousness which allowed him to be able to look at anything and everyone around him as the same energy and life force which was driving him. He saw that not only he, but also everything that he could ever think or observe was, is, and will forever be God - the collective essence of everything from matter to energy to consciousness itself that exists and presents itself in a unique fashion within every individual brain.

What keeps us from living within this same mindset of compassion? I would personally argue that society itself is the biggest stumbling block. It’s set up in a way that singles out your primal desires and instantly gratifies them. This weakens your ego and makes you even more susceptible to making poor decisions in the future.

Although our basic survival needs seem to be met, we are all dying inside for attention and recognition. We are now living in an age which we no longer base our self worth on where we stand in regards to our neighbors, but rather on where we stand on social platforms that are filtered to show solely the good qualities of people. Even nonconformists who post however they’d like are still seen as larger-than-life because they are confident in what makes them unique. We envy those around us who have it better, but in reality the grass is always greener on the other side.

Something you need to understand to be able to act in compassion is that pain is pain. Your brain doesn’t distinguish between your house being blown up, your body being abused, or you being called fat. Obviously there are different types of pain, but the signal your brain emits is that something is not right. Something that your conscious self did not plan for has interrupted your ideal perception of the world and now you have to adjust. You must either address the root of the pain or avoid it until it is unbearable. With this in mind, you can see how everyone is dealing with unresolved pain in some sort of fashion which clouds our judgement and makes us act in a way that is not true to our character.

The root of any action is intention; every intention falls on a range of “self-service” and “service to others”. When you begin to understand that the ego is made up of various lenses which obscure specific things that would be traumatic to your mentality, you can understand that various types of pain within different aspects of your brain accumulate with your mental blockages to create a skewed perception of reality. It takes a lot to see the world as it is, but most importantly it starts with seeing yourself for who and what you are.

Overall, the ego is content. It created one view of the world and it doesn’t like to change it very much. We are okay with the fact that we imagine the world and the environment around us in the best possible scenarios to make it so that we have the least amount of stress. The funny thing, however, is that not dealing with an issue head-on creates a catch-22. You see yourself in a broken fashion while the people around you are either perfect or lacking in everything that you value in a person. This is because your perception of certain traits in people send your brain down a pathway that will lead to a traumatic realization and connect your current issue with one that was too much for you to bear in the past. Rather than spelling out what is about to happen, you get sent subtle signals until something outside of yourself triggers the big realization.

In order to get rid of some of the lenses that your ego has adapted, you have to find the root causes for why you put them up in the first place. It definitely isn’t easy and your brain will try its very hardest to keep you from ever being able to actually tell what has been bothering you. Those things that you think about only when you’re extremely depressed that seem to come from nowhere are called resentments. They’re the bad things that have happened to us that continuously play over in our mind because at the time of these traumas, we simply didn’t have the proper brain pathways to make sense of the situations. We had to simplify things in terms of what we knew until a later date, but the later date never came and we eventually had to build on top of partial understandings of the reality of the world.

Now, we can see things aren’t completely right in our heads and we get glimpses of what is actually wrong at our true lowest points. This is because your ego is acting in self-survival mode. It knows that once you figure out the root of your pain and realize that you get hurt in a similar way every time because that’s how your brain processes pain due to your resentments, your perception of the world will change and therefore that version of the ego will die. It is a good thing, although it often comes with a sense of, “What do I do now?”

Once we figure out these resentments and can pinpoint how these affect our current reality, we have two options: we can do something about it to change our lives or wallow about how we’re unhappy with the reality around us. It’s just like getting an assignment in school; you can start the assignment when you get it, wait until the last second to get it done, or you can simply not do it. Some people are lucky and can emotionally succeed in life without doing much self-reflection, however that group is slim.

Stirring up unsettling emotions often brings out a lack of motivation to do anything about it. If you’re lucky, then someone will help you through this process, but most of us have to try to do it on our own. The issue is that it’s easier to sit back and let your world spiral downhill while telling yourself you’ll do something about it than to actually get up and do it. For most people, saving an essay for the last minute is just how it always goes.

Usually, the homework piles up and gets too difficult to deal with, so we end up not doing it at all or asking for the answers from a friend. Life is like that too. We usually let everything pile up until something triggers us to deal with our issues. Sometimes we talk about it with others and they help us out, but usually if we can even recognize the problems, we distract ourselves from them.

Anxiety and depression can be heightened by a multitude of factors. High expectations from parents cause us to either exert ourselves to the point of having frequent mental breakdowns and identity crises or to not put in any effort or care at all about meeting those expectations.

We set high standards for ourselves because we know that if we were given the proper tools we could achieve those. This ideal version of what you can and will be is God. He put you in your exact environment at your specific time and date of birth so that you could struggle and find strength within that. He will come out and act continuously through you only if you allow yourself to be the conduit of spiritual energy that you were intended to be. Life is a big game in which you try to balance the different workings of your brain so that this ideal, true self is your reality. The goal is to have this at the center and have your other sub-workings of your mind move harmoniously with this, not against it. Most of us, however, are subject to the confines of society, which are in place to limit who we become and make it more difficult to find balance.

If you really think about it, the majority of the world is playing the game based off of the rules taught by their friends while the influencers of society hold the real instructions behind their back and tell us that our rules are close enough. The people controlling the direction of thought in the world don’t want us to figure out the real rules because then the entire game which they’ve gotten so good at playing and manipulating will be seen for what it truly is. Then, new rules will be adapted that will be adjusted for equity; people will finally be able to achieve.

There is a distinct reason that the phrase, “E Pluribus Unum,” is the motto for America. This is completely up for interpretation, but I would argue that “one from many” is more than just one collective union from individual states. It’s more than just integrating society into one people that care for and about each other. The goal is for YOU to become the one from many that sees something is wrong sparks change. YOU have to be the one to truly save your own life. Everything happens for a reason and if you’ve gotten this far then that means that you’re like me too.

You’ve been hurt and you’ve fallen down more than one too many times. Everyone has a place and a distinct role to play in society, but yours is so much more than you think. You’re a leader in nature but you’re scared. You’re unsure of yourself, but I’ll tell you a secret: uncertainty is certainty.

My transformative journey showed me that my happiness directly correlated to how true I was to myself. Once I found my purpose and meaning, I found happiness within myself. Happiness that is drawn from other people is powerful, but the strongest feelings of content come from within; once you’re comfortable with yourself, your entire life changes. You become a catalyst in the butterfly effect.

Title: "The Decision of Indecision"

Genre: Fictional Bildungsroman

Age Range: 14-50

Word Count: 50,000 (not finished yet)

Author Name: Brandon First

Why a Good Fit: This novel includes a strong aspect of self-realization and becoming the hero in your own story. It's relatable to most readers and takes you down unique thought patterns which will transition into personal real-life realizations. This has potential and would be helpful especially to generation z.

The hook: ‘I’ve always wished I were able to listen to directions and simply do as instructed. Something inside of me either really likes getting in trouble or really dislikes authority because I always find myself getting scolded in some manner. To be completely honest I blame most of that on my dad. If he weren’t such a dick maybe I would’ve respected my teachers. If he taught me how to play sports then maybe I would have fit in more. If I didn’t hate him so much maybe I wouldn’t lash out every time I experienced a minor inconvenience. All I know for certain is that I was being watched closely because of it so I made sure to give them all a show.’

Synopsis: Chris Sweeney is a Sophomore in High School plagued by an abusive, alcoholic father. He acts out of emotion and is a lone wolf. He has his eyes out for the new girl, Angela, and eventually gets her. Some huge event happens, although the focus is on the fact that society and his father trained him to be relatively harmless. Things in his life all seem to be working themselves out, but that doesn't mean that it's an easy process. Eventually, Chris finds a sense of meaning and resolves most of his issues.

Target Audience: Younger audience, people struggling with mental health issues, "outcasts", deep thinkers, and those who simply need some guidance.

Bio: I personally was adopted at 18 months old and that affected all of my relationships afterward. It took me a long time to be able to see myself for who I was, but it took even longer to love myself or anyone around me. I had to figure a lot of things out on my own, as I simply thought about things in a much deeper fashion than my adopted family. I have an ability to put words to concepts that are intangible. I like to focus on psychological, sociological, and philosophical matters. To me, understanding consciousness as a whole can only come through personal realizations and reflections. I learn a lot about myself through my writing.

Education/Experience: Private grade school - Kindergarten-8th Grade

Private Preparatory - High School

I learned a good amount about grammar and writing structure, which I need to revisit in order to revise my book correctly.

Personality: I'm a very extroverted, easy-going person who enjoys helping people learn. I am constantly finding new people in pain and then working with them to find the roots of that pain.

Writomg Style: I try to take a methodical, yet familiar approach to my writing. I try to make it seem as though a mature author is writing back on their own life and adding in slightly more insight than they may have had at the time. I try to stay relatively lighthearted given the topics I write about, however.

Hobbies: Painting, singing, playing instruments, talking to/helping people, and learning.

Hometown: Erie, Pennsylvania

Age: 19

Thank you for considering and I hope to hear back from you.

As words are solely a medium for the energy and experiences behind them, the way that they are expressed will most definitely affect the way they are perceived. Regardless of how you text impersonally, a professional writing should be written to match the atmosphere created throughout the rest of the excerpt.

“I’m nervous,” Angela explained, “I never thought much about when I was going to lose my virginity, but now that it’s about to happen I’m terrified.”

“I know how you feel. I just keep thinking that I’m not gonna be good enough. My anxiety is through the roof. It’s like even though it’s just you and me here I can still feel everyone else’s pressures on me, you know?”

She soothingly offered, “Hey. Babe. You’re gonna be fine. It’s just you and me here. Don’t worry about what anyone else thinks.” Her soft, motherly voice soothed my anxiety. I leaned in to kiss her and she fell back onto my bed. She was more passionate than ever in her kissing.

I halted the kissing for a split second to take off my shirt and she did the same. We kissed for another minute or so before she signaled to my pants and said, “Take them off.” I adhered to her request, then assisted in removing hers.

She got off the bed and unclipped her corset, allowing her tits to drop and bounce a little. She was absolutely perfect in this moment, more than ever. She turned around and bent over, pulling off her panties and showing me her pussy. I had fingered her before, but I never got to actually see what it looked like.

She sucked on her pointer finger, then slipped it up inside of her vagina; I could feel myself getting harder by the second as she moaned. I got on the bed and spread her labia, revealing her rose pink vagina. I flicked and guided my tongue in her pussy while rubbing her clit. She had her head back and was moaning with pure pleasure. When she made eye contact with me, that was easily the hottest thing I’d ever seen. After a few minutes, she bit her bottom lip and said that she was ready.

She got on top of me and put my dick in her pussy. It was tight and only the tip went in at first. “Oh my God it’s so big,” she moaned. She tried sitting down on it, and after two or three gentle thrusts it slipped all the way in. Her pussy was so wet and warm that I could barely keep myself from cumming inside of her.

“I’m gonna come!” I said as I pushed her off of me and released a hose of a load onto her body.

“Babe it’s okay. Now you can just put on a condom and we can go again.” I agreed. I ripped open a trojan and pulled out the rubber O. It almost smelled like a tire factory. I slipped it on, then told Angela to lie down on the bed. She spread her legs and I rubbed her clit in a circular motion. Her head went back as she gripped my sheets tightly.

I grabbed my cock, which was still hard, and slipped it in with one easy thrust. The condom felt a little tight, but it was easier to keep from cumming with it on. I thrusted my hips forward, rolling my body slowly. I increased the speed and soon enough was humping her so fast that my dick started to feel numb. She began to claw my back, leaving deep red cuts with her sharp nails. Just as we heard tires screeching in the driveway, I came again.