"At twenty, you don’t get the life you deserve, you are just the product of the environment you were lucky or unlucky to have. Then, as you get older, and enter your thirties, forties, and beyond, you notice how much agency you actually had on your life. Maybe you moved abroad, learned another language, another culture, another mindset, and became an entirely different person. Maybe you decided you had nothing to lose, and invested all your meager savings into the bet of a lifetime, and it worked out. Maybe you changed all your habits, and realized that you could be much healthier, smarter, stronger than you thought, if you simply maintain a better diet, a better training, a better sleep, a better routine. Maybe you fell in love, and realized that a great marriage was about so much more than physical attraction and intellectual compatibility: if you find yourself walking alongside with a kind, thoughtful, honest person who loves you back, you actually won the lottery. Maybe you met some great people during your journey, shared with them parts of your journey, overcame difficult challenges together, finally understood the real meaning of “friendship,” and that some people are worth trusting and making sacrifices for. Maybe you also had health issues, lost a few precious people that you loved, understood the fragility of life and the pain that comes with truly loving someone else, but also finally gained enough wisdom to appreciate the simple things in life, that are free and in abundance. It’s a long journey. The best and the worst things will happen to you. You can choose to act like a victim, or you can choose to respect yourself and be more resilient, mentally stronger, overall better. In the end, you will look back, you will connect the dots, and it will all make sense, that you got exactly what you deserved."
Source: X (Twitter), Orange Book