Twelve. I didn’t come out the way they expected.
And now, I’m at some variable of a number wondering if it still makes a difference.
-Alex Dang, “Times I’ve Been Mistaken for a Girl”

As their only son, I didn’t come out the way my parents expected.

Life didn’t go as I expected either.

Trying too hard to live up to expectations that were never mine, nor were they in line with what I value, has constantly set me up for failure. Achievement was never a reality in this endemic mentality, which can be adequately dubbed: fantasy land.

What the world wants from you is different from what the universe demands of you.

The world wants you to conform to a way of thinking, of being and of doing. The universe would rather you join the cosmic dance that unites yourself to the communion of subjects that is the cosmos. In comparing the two, I would rather see reality from God’s perspective and rise to that level of expectation…

especially since we came out exactly the way the universe expected.

No one was ever meant to be enslaved in flaws.

Once we break those chains, our reality changes and we rise above guilt-ridden expectations.