PHOTO | EDWIN TSE | ♡ HIS WORK
Life is like tango, you get all tangled up, you make mistakes, but you tango on until you tango out of them. Then comes a moment when you look around and notice that you are no longer tangled and the mistakes are in the dust behind you.
I haven’t seen the sunrise for a long time, but sunsets are my thing. Florida has a beautiful sky. The sky shoots further than the eyes can see with no hills or mountains cutting into the skyscape. But it’s not just how it stretches. The color scheme gets striking. Every day the sky shifts, fluorescent pinks, luminescent blues, and splashes of piercing orange often burn up above creating a natural ever-shifting abstract work of art.
I’m stretched out in the sand with my head propped against a sand dune watching the sun go down. My birthday is coming up and I reminisce about my past year. What did I do? What did I learn? Who did I meet? I muse over a whole years-worth of personal growth and all of my blunders.
Move Forward
This year was forgiving when it came to mistakes. In fact, it taught me that mistakes are nothing to get hung up over. They are a necessary part of life especially when they are honest blunders (not failed schemes). They happen. Sometimes the result of foolish decisions, but often simply because living requires taking chances.
I got tangled up here and there and when I focused on detangling myself, the thing turned into quicksand, it sucked me in deeper and deeper. At some point this year I pinned a phrase to my wall, “move forward.”
I saw those words every day and the concept finally took root. When I found that I am digging myself deeper into something, I forced myself to look ahead instead of staring into. Just move forward. I never really knew what it meant to go forward in the moments when I needed to most, but that was the goal. Then, no matter how obscure it got to go forward, I went on, until at some point I looked around and could not even remember the original hangup.
Life is Like Tango
After all, life is like tango, you get all tangled up, you make mistakes, but you tango on until you tango yourself out of them. The key is to never stop inside of a mistake because as soon as you do, the thing gets sealed and labeled as a mistake. That is where the story ends, but keep going and the mistake becomes part of the journey. So no matter what happens, tango on— the sun will rise, the sun will set, and life will open up to you.
