I Might Be the Only Constant

And I Don’t Know If That’s Enough

The more I go through life, the more I am convinced that almost every condition is both a blessing and a curse. What seems to separate them into good or bad is often just a matter of which side weighs more. That’s how I have come to see adulthood. Strip away the weight of responsibility and the slow fading of childhood innocence, and it might pass as the best phase of life. There is a clarity that comes with it—a kind of awareness. That moment when something about life finally makes sense, even briefly, feels like a quiet victory.

I remember coming across Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning and knowing I had to read it. In it, he recounts his experience in concentration camps and then introduces logotherapy—his attempt to answer one of life’s most pressing questions: what makes life worth living? Reading it stirred something in me. At first, it was confusion—why is life like this? Why is humanity capable of such depth of suffering, such cruelty?

Stories of hardship had always felt distant, but this felt immediate. The reality of camps, gas chambers, and the deliberate breaking of human dignity left me unsettled. And yet, in the middle of all that, Frankl insists that everything can be taken from a person except one thing: the freedom to choose their attitude in response. It sounds simple, almost too simple, but it is not. It is not a denial of suffering; it is a way of standing in it.

And if those examples feel far away, it doesn’t take much to look around and see that life, even now, is far from fair. Survival often demands sacrifice. People endure injustice, loss, and preventable pain every day. Even the idea of a stable, comfortable life can feel like a luxury. Life doesn’t arrange itself neatly. Most things are not black and white. For a long time, I kept asking why life is like this, but I began to wonder if that was the wrong question. Life is already what it is; it does not wait for our approval. So maybe the better question is: how do I live, knowing this is how life is?

Frankl offers an answer—meaning through work, through love, and through the way we respond to unavoidable suffering. At first, that grounded me. It felt solid, like something I could hold on to. But over time, and through experience, those things began to feel fragile. They felt like anchors, and life has a way of proving that anchors can fail. I have always been careful—maybe even selective—about the things I allow to give me comfort. So when I find something that steadies me, I hold on tightly. Work, people, purpose—these things matter. They give shape to my days. They give me reasons to keep going. But lately, they have not held the way I thought they would. Not out of choice—just life happening.

Two people can build their lives around each other, convinced nothing will come between them. Then life shifts. Children come, priorities change, distance grows. Eventually, those same children leave, and what once felt permanent reveals itself as something that was always in motion. Even the things we dedicate ourselves to are not guaranteed. I think about my interest in medicine—the years it took, the waiting, the uncertainty—and I find myself asking what I would have done if it never worked out. I think about love, about the people we are told will give our lives meaning, and I ask quietly: what happens when love is not enough?

At the end of it all, it begins to feel like I might be the only constant—and I don’t know if that is enough, especially in a world where everything seems to have a backup, and even those backups fail. That question—who am I when everything I lean on is gone—is no longer theoretical to me. It feels close. Personal. Lately, I have tried turning inward, sitting with myself, learning my own company. It is not perfect, but it feels safe, at least for now. And there are moments I am tempted to stay there, to withdraw a little (too much), because I am not sure how much more disappointment I can take. Apparently, hope, when stretched too thin, can start to hurt.

But even there, something in me resists the idea that I am meant to carry myself alone. Which is why, despite everything, I find myself reaching beyond myself—toward God. Not with perfect clarity or certainty, but with a quiet persistence. There are still gray areas. There are still questions. But there is also a sense that maybe I was never meant to be enough on my own. That maybe meaning is not something I create entirely by myself, but something I respond to—something I lean into.

At the same time, I know it would not be honest to turn away from the world completely. From people, from work, from love, from even suffering. These things matter. They shape us. They give texture to our lives. Maybe the problem is not that these things fail, but that I expect them not to. Maybe they were never meant to hold me completely. Maybe every condition really is both a blessing and a curse—not because it confuses us, but because it reveals how tightly we try to hold on to what was never meant to stay.

And maybe—just maybe—meaning is not found in what remains, but in how I learn to live with what doesn’t. Maybe, even in the mess of it all, there is still something worth seeing. Maybe life, as unpredictable and fragile as it is, still holds beauty. And maybe the best I can do is not just search for that beauty, but in my own small way, learn to become it.