What are you working toward in life, and what gives you a sense of purpose?
I’m curious to hear what keeps people moving forward in life. Is it building a career, raising a family, achieving financial freedom, creating something meaningful, helping others, or simply enjoying the present moment?
Have you figured out what you’re working toward, or are you still trying to figure it out?
I’d love to hear your perspectives and personal experiences. Not looking for textbook answers—just honest thoughts from real people.

Have you ever felt like your birthdays have never mattered? Like nobody shows up, nobody gives a damn, nobody takes time to remember?

I just turned 31 yesterday. Yet, every single year, it's shit. Its like I'm barely even remembered at all. I'm always the forgotten stepchild and I always feel like I'm nobody every single year.

I always have to remind everyone about it and I hate that. It's fucking pathetic. But it shows that nobody remembers, and nobody gives a damn.

I know mines hasn't mattered and I know it never will. If you are in a situation like this, how do you live life? How can you go through, knowing you have this every year and it feels like it doesn't matter, because it doesn't matter to anyone?

Yeah, they'll know the rest of their friends' birthdays but not your own, and never your own.

I don't know. Maybe its either because I'm autistic or I just don't understand how life and society works or functions because even at 31, I still can't figure it out. I'm lost.

I'm not looking for advice or anything else like that. I'm just curious as to how you see it from your viewpoint when you encounter a situation like this, because this could affect someone's mental health without you even knowing it.

I think everyone has noticed the progressive gambling epidemic. Especially within the past 5 years there's so many countless ads, shorts, tiktoks and whatnot on gambling. Whether its ads, or entertainment, etc. It feels almost calculated in a way. I can't really explain it but 2019-2025 felt weird in a way where everything seemed super planned. From Covid, to lockdown, to social media blowing up more, things like politics, debate, GAMBLING, podcasts. Not a conspiracy theorist but I digress. Some people seem to not be able to put a cent in a machine or a website and others are willing to risk it all. I'm a gambler myself and basically all my friends can go to the casino once a year and spend 100 bucks and call it. I'm very different. I feel like I get lost in the moment and lose all sense of reality. How many people's live has been directly effected by gambling and how bad has it gotten? I'm just curious.

Sometimes, we get so caught up in our own problems that we forget to look at the bigger picture.

People struggle with poverty, denied education, trafficking, deadly diseases, civil wars, and the loss of freedom. Meanwhile, many of us have opportunities to study, work, travel, love, and choose the lives we want to build.

I'm not saying our pain doesn't matter. But **our pain is real without being the whole story of our lives.**

How much of the life we have are we missing because we're too focused on what went wrong?

Maybe we need to look around, appreciate what we have, and remember that life is bigger than our problems.

Have you ever experienced a moment that changed your perspective like this?

I’m sitting by myself this evening, listening to music and looking out at the road from my sixth-floor balcony. It’s already dark, but the world is still busy. Cars coming and going, people getting off work, everyone heading somewhere. Sometimes I even catch myself calculating how long a car takes to reach the point where I can see it. I don’t know why. I just like watching.

I read somewhere once, *do we want to be on top so we can see the world, or so the world can see us?* I’ve always loved that thought. Maybe living this high up makes me think about it a little more.

At some point, I take my glasses off. My eyesight is pretty bad, so without them, the entire world turns into a blur. But I’ve always liked looking at things this way when I want to be alone. Everything loses its shape, and somehow, I find it beautiful.

Tonight, the road looks like someone has scattered glitter across it. Little specks of light in different colours, moving at different speeds. I can’t tell which ones belong to trucks or cars anymore. I can only see the colours, and for some reason, I can’t stop looking.

I wonder if I’ll ever want to get my eyesight completely fixed. Not because I don’t want to see things clearly, but because there’s a version of the world I get to see only when I take my glasses off. A version where everything familiar becomes something else entirely. And I think I’m a little attached to it.

There’s a moon rising right in front of me, and across the road, a single home in a huge building is decorated with little pink and blue Diwali lights. I keep looking at the lights, then at the moon, then back at the lights. The sky gets darker, and the moon somehow gets brighter. I don’t even realise how long I’ve been sitting here.

I think about this one evening at a fair with my love. We had just gotten off the Ferris wheel and were sitting together, watching it turn in front of us. For some reason, we both took our glasses off. His eyesight is even worse than mine, so we sat there, holding hands, looking at what was once a Ferris wheel but had now become nothing more than little specks of light circling endlessly against the night sky. We weren’t talking about anything profound. Nothing particularly extraordinary was happening. But I remember thinking how beautiful it was to finally have someone who could see the world the way I did. Someone who could look at the same blur of colours and find the same kind of beauty in it. It’s one of those moments I’ve quietly kept to myself, and I think I always will.

Lately, I’ve been so caught up in my own head, thinking about life, about what’s happening, what isn’t, and why everything feels so uncertain. But right now, I’m just sitting here, listening to a song, watching tiny lights move across a distant road, and smiling for no particular reason. I don’t have answers to the things I’ve been worrying about. Nothing has changed. I just feel nice.

Maybe that’s what makes this evening so special. There’s nothing extraordinary happening. The world is doing what it does every day. People are going home, cars are passing by, someone is putting up Diwali lights, and the moon is slowly becoming brighter. But I’m sitting here long enough to notice it all.

I keep thinking about how many little things I miss when I’m too busy thinking about everything else.

And as I’m writing this, the moon is finally at its brightest, right in front of me, and it’s so fucking beautiful. I genuinely can’t explain it. I just keep looking at it, and I don’t want to look away.

I don’t know. I just feel a lot of things tonight, and I want to remember what it feels like to sit here, doing nothing, and be this happy.

I’ve only seen my father cry twice.

Both reasons were because his wife/my mom left him.

Ya know, I don’t want to paint my dad as this tough rugged guy, that wouldn’t describe him properly. He was funny, extremely intelligent, philosophical, and religious (in the way he explained biblical stories, not enforce/assume authority).

At the same time, he was surely passionate. Quick to anger. But I loved the man and still do. I was the youngest of five and I was young enough to think “can’t we all just get along?” But it didn’t work out that way.

See, the thing is, I saw my dad (and brother for that matter) as a superhero because of his contribution to the USA track community. But home wasn’t always the same as the newspaper.

I write this because I’m now the age my dad was when I was 3 years old. It’s definitely a trip to see him as, well, me. He was a young guy, with 5 kids. He was a human being with college experiences, a girlfriend who became his wife, and I came along 13 years later.

I look just like the man. All I have to do is look at him and I’ll know what I will look like old.

He cried in the parking lot in public when my mom told him that she wouldn’t give him another chance.

I get it dad. I’ll try to accomplish the one awesome feat you couldn’t pull off.

Hi everybody.

Sometimes we spend so much time thinking about our future selves—the person we’ll become when we get the right job, earn enough money, find the right partner, or finally get our lives together.
But what if, years from now, we’ll look back at this exact phase of our lives and wish we had enjoyed it a little more?
It’s strange how we keep waiting for life to get better without realizing that one day, we’ll probably miss the ordinary days we’re living right now.

The thing about adulthood is, you have lived enough life, had conversations with enough people and has had enough experiences to know who you are.

As a teenager, i used to talk to people to get validation. With time and with enough life experiences, i have an idea on who i am. That changes how you interact with people as you are not talking to people for validation.

Im still not fully there but growing. At times, i do doubt myself based on people's perception but i believe i will reach to a point someday when i wont be affected by other people's opinions and actions because i know who I am.