It’s My Life’s Battle Between Niceness and Self-Preservation

While running my daily miles in the gym in Taipei City, I found myself gazing out the window of the fitness center, watching the world go by. Down below, life moved with a frantic rhythm—people coming and going, immersed in their routines and struggles. It struck me how small we all are in the grand scheme of life and living. I often feel this when I travel, but this moment hit differently.  Amidst the noise and the motion, the familiar chords of Jon Bon Jovi’s It’s My Life filled the gym; then, a few minutes later, when I put my air pods back in – what are the chances that this same song would ring in my ears again – within thirty minutes of each other. Suddenly, the song wasn’t just background music. It was a wake-up call.

“This ain’t a song for the broken-hearted,” Jon sang, and I realized it wasn’t a song for the people I had spent my life trying to please in the past, either. It was a song for me. I had been bending, twisting, and reshaping myself for years to accommodate others. I said yes when I meant no, smiled when I felt like crying, and took the blame to keep the peace. But the more I gave, the more I felt empty. The more I sacrificed, the more the world and people seemed to take without much of a thank you.

This life of being nice—a well-trained people-pleaser—had become exhausting, but it came with a cruel reward: acceptance, however fleeting, the illusion that I was indispensable to others’ happiness. That was enough, or so I thought, for far too many years. But Jon’s lyrics—“I just wanna live while I’m alive”— haunted me. What was I doing with my one wild, precious life?

The truth is, the world doesn’t reward self-abandonment. People are consumed by their own struggles and their own needs. They don’t notice when your sacrifices drain you. And why should they? The burden of taking care of our own happiness rests solely on our own shoulders. The chorus started to ring louder each time I heard it: “It’s my life / It’s now or never / I ain’t gonna live forever.”

Being accommodating felt virtuous, but it became a slow death. Each time I put someone else’s priorities above my own, a little piece of me faded. I thought kindness would win hearts, but it often attracted takers—people willing to drain me dry because I made it so easy. I realized the flaw in my logic: living for others didn’t guarantee love or loyalty. It only guaranteed that I would continue to keep losing myself.

Yet, breaking free of the likable persona over the years wasn’t easy. It felt selfish at first. There’s a line in the song that says, “Like Frankie said, ‘I did it my way.’” At first, I envied that audacity….the courage to unapologetically chart my course, to say “no” without guilt, and to claim my right to joy.

The transformation was gradual. I began to set stronger boundaries. I started asking myself the hard questions: What do I want? What makes me happy? For the first time, I allowed myself to pursue those answers without fear of disappointing others. And yes, some people did and have pulled away. Others have called me self-focused, or they have quietly faded out of my life. But Jon’s words guided me: “Better stand tall when they’re calling you out / Don’t bend, don’t break, baby, don’t back down.”

The beauty of living my own life is this I am learning: the people who matter will respect me for it. They’ll cheer me on instead of trying to pull me back into the shadows of self-sacrifice. The ones who don’t? They were never truly on my side, to begin with.

There’s a bittersweet lesson: people are too consumed with their lives to care for yours. It’s not cruelty; it’s just human nature. The world won’t stop for your needs and won’t reward you for being a martyr. But when you care for yourself, you teach others how to treat you—with respect, not expectation.

It’s My Life isn’t just a rock anthem. It’s a manifesto. It’s a call to stand up, claim your space, and refuse to let others’ demands dictate your happiness. The message is simple but strong: You’re alive. Live like it. Because at the end of the day, no one else is coming to save you. No one else can live your life. And, as the song says, you can’t live forever.

So I might as well eat that Taiwanese street food tonight at the Shilin Night Market with its 500+ food vendors – here I come, scallion pancakes, steamed dumplings, tube-shaped sticky rice with mushrooms and mystery meat; my favorite to watch make and eat are the quail eggs with shrimp omelet bites. I may roll back to the hotel instead of walk – so be it. The mouthfuls of delicate deliciousness were worth it.