Human life, as we know it, exists alongside a cavalcade of positive and negative emotions.

Our environments can be, at times, disturbingly polluted with spoken and unspoken frustrations both positive and negative in nature.

More often than not, however, I notice that a lot of individuals allow such things to defeat them. Drug addictions, relationship problems, arguments with friends, judgment of peers and harassment only entail a fraction of this list of nuisances.

I am not a stranger to negative attention. I’ve moved from country to country throughout my elementary school experience and upon moving to the relatively small community of Terre Haute I struggled to make friends.

This was largely due to the fact that everyone else already had their respective “bffs” all but attached at the thigh, leaving me to wander around as some sort of disfigured third wheel.

It was inevitable; I was ostracized for being the “new kid.” In time, things changed. I changed. This was mostly due to my involvement in extracurricular activities.

I made, for the first time in my life, real friends. Looking back I now see all of the challenges I faced have given me the strength and ability to face the complications ahead of me.

Although I am still learning to take the past for what it is, I have come to know that in the end of all things it is only the negative emotions I will come to regret. Of all the elderly people I have had the pleasure of getting to know as they neared the end of their lives, I have yet to meet someone that doesn’t feel that they wasted all of the time they spent fretting over the little things.

This includes those who berate, bully, troll and complain. There is a reason “don’t feed the trolls” has become a commandment of the internet.

It’s because doing this only allows them victory. If someone passes by and calls you a name, ignore it for they aren’t worth your time. If somebody despises you out of the shallow harness of jealousy, let them fume for they are the ones wasting their lives with such empty, useless thoughts.

Nothing pains me more than watching people compromise their own existence for the sake of a significant other or for the sake of society.

There is a reason people whom are successful are few; it is because they never backed down. It is because they never allowed their realities to be consumed by the negativities of the world. It is because they chose to dream even when these dreams faced the constant fires of ridicule and fear.

If you have the passion and the commitment, literally anything is within your grasp. Reach for it; otherwise you will just stay where you are allowing others beat you down to their level. They’d love for some company as long as it’s “one of them.”