Clay Jensen Quote on Choosing To Live and To Keep Moving, Whatever Happens.

“Whatever happens, keep moving. Get through it. Choose to live. ‘Cause even on the worst day, there are people who love you. There’s new music waiting for you to hear; something you haven’t seen before that will blow your mind in the best way. Even on the worst day, life is a pretty spectacular thing.”

Clay Jensen, Graduation Speech, 13 Reasons Why (Season 4)

Beyond the Quote (173/365)

If you’re going through hell… keep going. I mean, why would you want to stay in hell? Not moving doesn’t seem like an option when hell is where you find yourself—so don’t fool yourself if you’re in some kind of hellish reality. Keep moving. Whatever happens. No matter how hard things get. Keep moving forward in some kind of direction that’s going to take you away from where you are and out of the hell that you might find yourself in. What’s the alternative?

Even on your worst days, when hell is burning strong and it’s raining fire all around you, remember that you never have to make the journey alone. There are people who love you. There are people who are inextricably linked to you who, even on your worst days, would still stand by your side. And even if you feel like they wouldn’t—never assume. Reach out and ask for help anyway. And if for nothing else, one of the amazing benefits of living in the world of connection, is that there is always someone else you can reach out to.

One thing I have learned in life is that whatever it is you’re going through, no matter how bad or ugly it might feel—there is someone who has been through the same, if not worse. I don’t say this to minimize your feelings towards your problems. I say this to give you hope. Hope that there is somebody out there—many people out there—who can relate to what you’re going through (because they have been through what you’re going through) and can offer you insight and support to help you get the hell out of a current, awful reality.

And don’t you ever feel like you’re burdening somebody else with your problems. What you have to understand about asking for help is that you’re offering another person an opportunity to help. And helping others is fundamentally tied to how we all find fulfillment in life. We are not islands, alone at sea and left to battle the hurricanes of life by ourselves. We are a continent of interconnected lands who unite against the hurricanes of the world. And it’s through the very process of helping one another that we build our own sense of security, sense of community, and can leave behind a legacy that we’re proud of. Islands don’t leave behind legacies because there’s nobody left behind to remember them! We have to connect to others for legacies to be carried on.

And don’t think that you always have to be the one who helps. Sometimes, you have to have the humility to let someone else be the helper. You have to give them the gift—the opportunity—to help you sometimes. Remember, without one, the other can’t exist. If everybody only wanted to help, but nobody wanted to receive the help—nobody would get better and nothing would get improved. It’s like a holiday season where everybody only gave gifts and nobody opened the gifts that were given. We would just have a bunch of wrapped presents laying around! This is how the world looks when nobody wants to receive help. Just unwrapped gifts laying around in all of our lives.

It’s only through that process of actually opening a gift that the giver can receive any joy at all. And, of course, the person who received the gift feels good because somebody else thought of them and something was given to them. It’s a win-win. When you ask someone for help, this type of exchange runs even deeper than materialistic gift giving—especially if it’s in regards to getting through a hell-like situation. This is the type of gift that runs straight to a person’s core and is something that won’t soon be forgotten—for both parties.

Why? Because vulnerability is the foundation for connection. If we’re not vulnerable then what are we? Blocked off? Walled up? Hidden and Masked? Genuine connection can’t form when we’re not vulnerable because it’s not our genuine selves that we’re presenting. When you open yourself up to someone who you think might be able to help and they offer you something in return that does, in fact, help—how could that not lead to a genuine connection? And one day, what you’ll realize is that their insight, their story, their advice, will become a type of map or survival guide that will stay with you forever. And that survival guide will now be in your possession. Awaiting its opportunity to be shared and passed on to the next person who needs it.

But, until somebody asks for help, that survival guide will simply be collecting dust after it has fully served you. And wouldn’t it feel amazing if you could offer that survival guide to someone who could really use it? Don’t you think that it would absolutely change your life knowing that you changed someone else’s? The opportunity is laid out in front of us every day. We simply have to stay humble, open-minded, ready to ask for help when we need it (so that other people can give to us), ready to listen when someone comes to us (so we can give to other people), and stay connected to the people around us.

Because even on our worst days, life can still offer us some pretty spectacular opportunities—even if they aren’t self-evident or immediately pleasant at the time. Some moments take time to flower. Some moments only make sense in retrospect. Some moments spent in hell only get better when we use what we learned to help someone else get out of a hell themselves. Remember, you are not an island. We are all inextricably linked. Stay humble and stay well. Choose to live. Your purpose here is real.

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Read Next: Clay Jensen’s Graduation Speech from 13 Reasons Why (Season 4) [2020]

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