Sooner or later, we all have those days where we want to refuse to acknowledge our pain by staring at the ceiling blasting Khalid or stuffing our faces into our pillows.

If you are an overly positive person, this may happen to you once in a blue moon; if so, power to you! However, if you are like me or any other average human being, this may happen once every few weeks to once a month.

This is our humanity. It is not our sunniest part of humanity, but I am glad it exists. This is living. This is feeling.

Some of us grow up in households where they live by the bootstrapping theory: “Don’t be sad! Pull up your bootstraps, honey.” Others grow up in emotionally open households.

Depending on the circumstances, the gravity on mental health varies. In these states of mind, we often ask, “Why me?” like our problems are overly specific to ourselves and there is not one person out of the 7.5 billion people in the world who understands.

Ultimately, we believe we deserve better. And we do. However, we often forget that reality rises with the sun and the moon. You will have your highs and your lows. This is the inevitability that comes with having humanity.

What also comes from humanity is the ability to choose. There are bits and pieces of our identity that we cannot control, such as our socioeconomic class of birth, ethnicity, race and received primary education. While this is true, there are also portions of our identity that we can change.

Identity includes lifestyle. Accept the things we cannot change and change the things we cannot accept. Find that change and make it the very purpose that keeps your heart ticking from the second you wake up to the moment you rest your eyes. If you pinpoint even one aspect of your life that forces you to shove all your feelings into your pillowcase, you have already begun the change. Attacking a pinpoint is checking a box off your list. After one, attack another.

Life should be more about survival. A part of survival is about not allowing yourself to shake the soda bottle until the moment the cap spouts off dozens of miles away from you. When a soda bottle becomes fizzy, we let out the fizz slowly and from the top. We do not release fizz from the sides or bottom. We release from the top old fizz first and then release the lower layers of fizz to finally get to the tasty, carbonated beverage. Why do you think advertisers extend the *tsssk* sound of an opening soda can? Because life is just better that way.

Why me? Why is this horrid event occurring during my lifetime? Why not someone else? Maybe because you are capable and can handle the tribulations in front of you. The person next to you may not be able to because their hardship endurance has not quite developed yet. Why you? The lows have to equal the highs, because it’s the balance of equilibrium in the game of life. Without the lows, there would be no highs. Allow yourself to taste the sweetness below the fizz.