Three nights ago, my sister sent me a link to an audition video for America’s Got Talent season 16, it was a link to the golden buzz moment of the 30-year-old beautiful woman who has a beautiful voice, she is Jane Marczwenski (she goes by the stage name Nightbirde). Jane sung It’s Okay, which she also wrote and according to her was the story of the last year of her life. By the time that you are reading this post, you have probably seen this viral video that is all over most social media platforms. Her less than 8 minutes audition video is one of the most moving and inspiring that I’ve watched.

It’s Okay Lyrics — Nightbirde

I moved to California in the summertime. I changed my name thinking that it would change my mind
I thought that all my problems they would stay behind
I was a stick of dynamite, and it just was a matter of time, yeah

Oh, dang, oh, my, now I can’t hide
Said I knew myself but I guess I lied
It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay
If you’re lost, we’re all a little lost and it’s all right
It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay
If you’re lost, we’re all a little lost and it’s all right
It’s all right, it’s all right, it’s all right

I wrote a hundred pages, but I burned them all
Yeah, I burned them all
I blow through yellow lights and don’t look back at all
I don’t look back at all

Oh, dang, oh, my, now I can’t hide
Said I knew myself but I guess I lied
It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay
If you’re lost, we’re all a little lost and it’s all right
It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay
If you’re lost, we’re all a little lost and it’s all right
it’s all right to be lost sometimes

Jane is just full of positivity, whenever she opens her mouth to answer or comment on the judges’ questions, I could feel every word that she says. Despite having cancer in her lungs, spine, and liver with a 2% percent chance of survival, Jane remained positive. I was teary-eyed when she said, “I have a two percent chance of survival but two percent is not zero percent. Two percent is something and I wish people knew how amazing it is.” Here’s someone who is holding on to a very small chance of surviving but still see the good out of it, yet, here we are – able and healthy, but we would rather concentrate living our life complaining and hating even about the little things that didn’t go according to our expectations.

When she said she is so much more than the bad things that happened to her, I felt that, I took that message to heart, but of all the things that she said on that night, my biggest takeaway was from the 14-word-sentence that she said towards the end of her audition

“You can’t wait until life isn’t hard anymore, before you decide to be happy.”

It got me. It is a great reminder that life is short, we won’t be in this earth forever, while we can and while we still have the ability to increase the quality of our life, we should not postpone it. Live in the “now.”

It is always easy for most of us to forget about living in the present and choose to concentrate towards the future or even worse, the past. We tend to spend our lives rehashing the past, thinking what we could have done differently and what could have happened if only we said this or we did that. Or… we are doing the opposite, we are very much thinking ahead and is very much focused on planning what will happen in the future, we think about that “one day, when…” life will be different or life will be happier.

This is why Jane’s words got me, day by day, life is fleeing from us and focusing our present on what might or what will happen tomorrow (or what happened in the past) means that we are not present in the now. I recognize that is important to plan for our future and its but natural for us to want a good future. But now that I am older, I realized that some of the most precious possessions that we could have are the memories that we have created throughout the course of our lives. While we are busy working for our future, we still shouldn’t neglect living life right this moment.

You wouldn’t want to be where you want to be 10 or 20 years from now looking back thinking that you did a mistake of not being in the present as you could be. One of the causes of being unhappy is not appreciating what we already have and focusing all our attention and time of what we don’t have, let’s not take “now” for granted, we can still be as present as possible while we still look forward to our plans for the future. Even if you are feeling uninspired, miserable or you feel that you are stuck into something – you still need to live your life NOW and not when the opportunity that you are waiting comes –

Live life now and be happy, not when you achieved your ideal body weight.

Live life now and be happy, not when you are debt-free or you won the lottery.

Live life now and be happy, not when you get that promotion that you are waiting for.

Live life now and be happy, not when this pandemic is over.

Live life now and be happy, not when you found the perfect partner for you.

Live life now and be happy because tomorrow is not guaranteed.

… we don’t need to be in a certain situation or to be in a better condition before we choose to live and find our happy place…

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