It\u2019s My Life\u2019s Battle Between Niceness and Self-Preservation<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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\u2014people 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\u2019s It\u2019s My Life<\/em> filled the gym; then, a few minutes later, when I put my air pods back in \u2013 what are the chances that this same song would ring in my ears again – within thirty minutes of each other. Suddenly, the song wasn\u2019t just background music. It was a wake-up call.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis ain\u2019t a song for the broken-hearted,\u201d Jon sang, and I realized it wasn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This life of being nice<\/em>\u2014a well-trained people-pleaser\u2014had become exhausting, but it came with a cruel reward: acceptance, however fleeting, the illusion that I was indispensable to others\u2019 happiness. That was enough, or so I thought, for far too many years. But Jon\u2019s lyrics\u2014\u201cI just wanna live while I\u2019m alive\u201d\u2014 haunted me. What was I doing with my one wild, precious life?<\/p>\n\n\n\n The truth is, the world doesn\u2019t reward self-abandonment. People are consumed by their own struggles and their own needs. They don\u2019t 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: \u201cIt\u2019s my life \/ It\u2019s now or never \/ I ain\u2019t gonna live forever.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Being accommodating felt virtuous, but it became a slow death. Each time I put someone else\u2019s priorities above my own, a little piece of me faded. I thought kindness would win hearts, but it often attracted takers\u2014people willing to drain me dry because I made it so easy. I realized the flaw in my logic: living for others didn\u2019t guarantee love or loyalty. It only guaranteed that I would continue to keep losing myself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yet, breaking free o<\/span>f the\u00a0likable\u00a0persona over the years\u00a0wasn\u2019t easy. It felt selfish at first. There\u2019s a line in the song that says,\u00a0\u201cLike Frankie said, \u2018I did it my way.\u2019\u201d\u00a0At first, I envied that audacity\u2026.the courage to unapologetically chart my course, to say \u201cno\u201d without guilt, and to claim my right to joy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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?<\/em> 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\u2019s words guided me: \u201cBetter stand tall when they\u2019re calling you out \/ Don\u2019t bend, don\u2019t break, baby, don\u2019t back down.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n The beauty of living my own life is this I am learning: the people who matter will respect me for it. They\u2019ll cheer me on instead of trying to pull me back into the shadows of self-sacrifice. The ones who don\u2019t? They were never truly on my side, to begin with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s a bittersweet lesson: people are too consumed with their lives to care for yours. It\u2019s not cruelty; it\u2019s just human nature. The world won\u2019t stop for your needs and won\u2019t reward you for being a martyr. But when you care for yourself, you teach others how to treat you\u2014with respect, not expectation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s My Life<\/em>\u00a0isn\u2019t just a rock anthem. It\u2019s a manifesto. It\u2019s a call to stand up, claim your space, and refuse to let others\u2019 demands dictate your happiness. The message is simple but strong:\u00a0You\u2019re 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\u2019t live forever. <\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It\u2019s My Life\u2019s 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\u2014people coming and going, immersed in their routines and struggles. It struck me […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":882,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,3,27,5,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-critical-thinking","category-empowerment","category-reflection","category-self","category-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/prolificpreambles.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/prolificpreambles.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/prolificpreambles.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prolificpreambles.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prolificpreambles.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=880"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/prolificpreambles.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/880\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":890,"href":"https:\/\/prolificpreambles.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/880\/revisions\/890"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prolificpreambles.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/882"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/prolificpreambles.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prolificpreambles.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prolificpreambles.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}