A heavy backpack we mistake for identity
Yesterday, I was talking with a friend and we began recalling moments from our past. I found myself laughing about personal situations that, at the time, were incredibly painful on an emotional level. I never thought I would one day remember such experiences and be able to laugh at them in the present. More specifically, I was referring to a period in my life when I realized I carried my resentments and wounds everywhere I went, convinced that they were simply part of my personality and my pride. I defended that personality fiercely, as if letting go of it would strip away my very identity, when in truth it was only hurting me. That baggage was unbearably heavy, but to me, it was everything. I clung to it and blamed the world for the injustices committed against me. It was like drinking poison and expecting it to harm someone else, yet for a long time, this was how I lived, because forgiveness cannot be invented. True forgiveness is born from understanding and liberation, and at that time, I was not willing to let go.
Forgiveness as liberation, not betrayal
I genuinely believed that releasing those wounds would be a betrayal to myself, that it meant I had not defended them fiercely enough or imposed the justice I thought I deserved. But nothing could be further from the truth. Neuroscience teaches us that holding onto resentment wires our brain into cycles of stress, keeping our nervous system locked in a fight-or-flight state. Over time, this state shapes our identity, making us confuse trauma for personality. When you connect with your true Self, you begin to honor and treat with compassion every step you have taken, because you were always the person you needed to be in each moment—and that is enough. For a long time, however, I loved my wounds too much. My soul longed for understanding, for learning, for forgiveness, and finally for freedom. I used to read about these ideas and never truly grasp them, because this cannot be understood on a purely intellectual level. It must be lived, experienced, and embodied. Only through practice and immersion in the experience can we reach the transformation.
Life as an experimental laboratory of the soul
I used my life as a kind of experimental laboratory, a test tube in which I could truly feel what liberation meant. My short-sighted ego only wanted quick results, but I managed to quiet it enough to make different choices, because the soul always seeks what is timeless. Physics reminds us that reality is not fixed—it is a field of probabilities until observed. Likewise, our life path is not predetermined; it collapses into form through the conscious and unconscious choices we make each day. Blessed imperfection shows us the edges of our own limits, and I love when people hear me speak and think I am a little mad—because I, too, once stood where they are. When they doubt their own potential, I see nothing but beings made of the same material as the stars, carrying the divine spark that brought the Universe into existence. Carl Sagan once said, «We are a way for the cosmos to know itself,» and I believe this deeply.
Blessed imperfection and the beauty of being human
In the moments when I sank to my lowest, I eventually rose again, because life is oscillatory. Just as electrons oscillate in their energy states and waves rise and fall in the ocean, our lives move through cycles of expansion and contraction, joy and pain. Quantum mechanics teaches us that nothing is static; even in stillness, there is movement. The wave function in quantum theory describes infinite possibilities before collapsing into a single reality, and in much the same way, our choices crystallize our personal universe. And here we are, in this present moment, awake, breathing, witnessing the beauty of everything around us. To smell a morning cup of coffee (and I do love coffee), to hear the subtle noise of trees swaying in the wind, or even the hum of cars in the background on this small blue dot floating in the vastness of space. You, reading these words. Me, writing them for you. We are sharing something beyond mere sentences.
The cosmic connection that binds us all
It is like Dirac’s equation, where matter and antimatter emerge from a unified principle—opposites intertwined within a deeper symmetry. If something here resonates with you, a part of me will remain imprinted within you, because in the end, we are connected. The atoms that make up our bodies were forged in the hearts of ancient stars, scattered across the Universe before finding their way into this moment. Stephen Hawking reminded us that information in the Universe is never truly lost—it transforms, it migrates, it reappears in new forms. In the same way, nothing of who we truly are is ever lost; even the pain we release transforms into understanding, compassion, and wisdom. And perhaps, just as the cosmos endlessly expands, so too can we learn to expand beyond our wounds—letting go, forgiving, and choosing to live fully awake.
And perhaps that is why, when I laughed yesterday at memories that once brought me to my knees, it felt like a quiet victory of the soul. It was as if the Universe itself had whispered, “You see? Even this can be light.” Life is never a straight line; it sways, expands, and contracts, like the tides, like the oscillations of matter and energy that shape reality. We fall, we rise, and in the rhythm of that movement, we learn that nothing is wasted—not a tear, not a scar, not a moment of despair.
Somewhere between the laughter of today and the wounds of yesterday, we realize that we are not the sum of what hurt us, but the expansion that followed. Just as the cosmos is still unfolding from the first breath of creation, so too do we unfold from every experience we have ever lived. And in that unfolding, we meet each other—not as strangers, but as fragments of the same infinite story, made of stardust, held together by light.