You Can Only Rely on Yourself, And That's Amazing.
I turned 20 this month. My last teenage year was eventful to say the least. A year full of surprises, both good and bad, lessons, some new and others forgotten. The most important lesson of my teenage unfolded in two striking revelations: you can only rely on yourself, and that's amazing.
Earlier this year, I had a daunting yet inevitable realization: you can only truly, completely rely on yourself. You can rest your head on someone's shoulder, but not sleep. It took me some time to come to terms with this, and even after I had learnt to accept it, it disturbed me a lot.
You can only and only control your own actions. You may expect someone to behave a certain way, but they can choose to act differently. You can't control anyone's actions but yours. While initially this was an unsettling lesson, it became the most liberating one.
It made me realize that I control what I do at every moment. At every moment, I am consciously making a choice to do what I'm doing. I can choose to learn PyTorch instead of bedrotting and scrolling memes on Instagram.
I have access to my optimal policy at all times, I just choose not to follow it.. Once I realized the importance of my actions, I started taking myself more seriously. Every day started compounding, and over the course of the summer, I learnt more than I did in the past year.
If your actions are all that you can control, then you owe it to yourself to do the best thing you can at all possible times.
Make your actions count :)