Journey, JH Park

Some Seasons of life arrive without knocking, yet rearrange the entire house.

There were years when I wanted nothing more than to live inside each passing moment – to feel it with the full weight of my body, the far reach of my mind. Even if it became an unbroken struggle, one with no horizon in sight, I believed that to inhabit my life completely was to leave no space for regret.

That conviction did not grow from youthful optimism. It came instead from a quieter, more unsettling truth: that much of what shape us – perhaps the most defining turns-uninvited, untouched by our will.

And So I learned to care less about what might happen, and more about what I would make of the given: this slender thread of time, this body I carry, this restless mind. What would I do with them, and in what manner? I kept that question close, like a small stone in my pocket-warmed by the touch of my own hand-and I acted as though the answer mattered.

The hours I shaped in that spirit now look back at me with a certain clarity: Then, That was my best. Whatever other roads may have existed, whatever choices might have been offered, I would still choose the life I have walked.

Perhaps this was never certainty, but rather a private benediction-a quiet hand laid upon my own shoulder. I came to lean on it, especially on days when the outline of my life felt unfamiliar, almost foreign.

And on such nights, when that small mercy slipped from reach, the absence of it pressed hard enough to keep sleep at a distance.