I go through the motions every day.

I wake up, perhaps later than intended, I brew a cup of coffee, I grab my backpack and keys, and I head out the door. From the hours of 9 a.m. and 11 p.m., I’m doing something.

I take at least three classes a semester, I work roughly 40 hours a week, I am involved in at least four organizations at any given time, I work out from time to time, I go to therapy when I need it, I do laundry when the time comes, and I find time at night to floss.

I do everything I’m supposed to. I work as hard as I can, sometimes to the point of exhaustion. Sometimes for other people, and sometimes for the responsibilities I’ve voluntarily taken upon myself.

In one of my “late-night-why-am-I-here-and-what-does-everything-mean” conversations in my head, I found it hard to pinpoint what my function in the world was. You know, that “why am I here” moments where you doubt every decision in the world, even ones you haven’t yet made.

I’ve found it easy to get caught up in the fast-paced world of scheduling things back to back, to spending more time on my phone that I do in person, to allotting time each day just to attend to my calendar.

I’ve spent so much of my life giving my time to other people: people who didn’t deserve it, people who took it for granted and people who didn’t value it. Time that I won’t ever get back.

I found a quote this week by a researcher that I follow from time to time that hit on a topic that I hadn’t thought about fully. As I near the end of my time in college, I can’t help but think that the things that I got involved with and the people that wasted my time.

I spent so much time and energy on people that were fair-weathered: when the going got rough, they bailed. I made decisions that I will always regret and some that I can’t bear to think about.

The quote is by Brene Brown, a scholar and speaker most known for her TED Talks about Empathy, Shame and Vulnerability. If you have a chance, she has a slew of books that pack some powerful and inspirational quotes that you can check out.

"Our job is not to deny the story, but to defy the ending — to rise strong, recognize our story, and rumble with the truth until we get to a place where we think, yes, this is what happened, this is my truth and I choose how this story ends."

The way I see it, our past is our story. The good and not so good parts of every past experience and choice shape us into who we are. These things we can’t change. I can’t change that I spend a year in a relationship I knew was unhealthy. I can’t change that I made a scene at a party that cost me my best friend. I can’t change the “me” that I was two, three, and four years ago.

There are so many things I wish I could change or reverse, but I can’t. There are so many things I wish I could pretend didn’t happen. Even if I were to decide that I won’t talk about them, guess what: they still happened.

Just as the quote says, our job is not to deny our past, but to recognize it, narrow in on our truth and empower ourselves to choose how the story ends.

My challenge to myself, and to anyone who reads this, is to find what your ending is. Find what makes you happy, rid yourself of the poison in your life — even the poison that disguises itself as something else—and discover your truth through your shortcomings.

Life is too short to live in your past.