I don't wanna see it coming.

How will you ever get out of this labyrinth of suffering?
A Final Paper for World Religions
Submitted to Dr. Hyde
by Cheeno Marlo Sayuno 

We didn’t sign up for this mess called life, but we are given this very complex something, and we ought to live this life out.

Alaska Young, a very good friend of ours, somehow assumed that we are in this labyrinth of suffering. We live in a world where we end up hating things, loving and not being loved back, living without money, working and not getting paid well, being left by the ones we love while leaving the ones who love us, and living the most of our fucked-up lives by being, well, fucked up. We are being infested with all the negative emotions. We have a lot of fears and we are eaten up by them alive. We lose just when we wanted to win. We fail when all we wanted is to be triumphant. We bathe in misery and excruciating pain when all we ever wanted is to be happy. Indeed, this labyrinth is one helluva ride toward nothing but accumulated suffering.

And how do we get out of it? Do we really have to just drive straight and fast, welcoming death while death itself isn’t even knocking just yet? Do we hold the door open for death to embrace us just when it is not even standing at our doorstep? How do we escape this labyrinth when we don’t even know what is waiting for us at the end of this tunnel? Is it worth the escape, then?

To get out of this cold, damp, and sad place, the only thing that we have to do is live. This labyrinth of suffering is also the same labyrinth of joy, of simple pleasures, of genuine love, of random acts of kindness, of littlest forms of hope. There is always something good in the bad. We just have to adjust our perspective and use a more positive lens.

Have you noticed the chirping of the birds and the small conversations by your neighbors in the morning? Have you noticed how strangers smile at you or how they help you even though they don’t know you? Have you noticed how people like your Facebook statuses just so they could make you feel loved and liked and noticed and cared for? Have you noticed how mom checks up if you’re doing well or how your little brother hugs you when you come from school or work?

There are a lot of good things to see with life. Sometimes, we get overwhelmed by the challenges that life throws us, the reason why we fail to see the obvious beauty of it. That is understandable because we are humans and we tend to falter. But then, we are humans and we are strong, too. We just have to use our potentials well to survive the battle of life.

Do not consume much of your time seeing this world as a labyrinth of suffering.  When you do that, you end up getting out of it, and you go back to where you should have been all along. You go back to living your life. That’s the labyrinth that you ought to tread.