If you don't mind, there's a question I'd like to share with all of you.
Do people need a second chance in order to be able to change?
If you consume even a bit of Asian pop culture, you know what I'm talking about. The whole catalog has become familiar even to people who never looked for it.
Isekai stories where the protagonist gets run over by a truck and is dumped into a world of magic. Miraculous returns that give defeated heroes back the start of their lives. Reincarnations that let someone be born again with their memories intact. Transmigrations where a soul swaps bodies like changing clothes.
They all offer the same promise: a chance to start over. A new life, a fresh try, a clean restart.
But the question I want to ask is: was that really necessary?
Look past the comfortable narrative, past the neatly wrapped plot.
What does that restart actually mean?
Is it the fantasy of erasing mistakes, rewriting history, guaranteeing that "this time" your choices will be better?
Isn't that just cowardice wrapped in gift paper and sold as hope?
Does life only get fixed if the universe hands us a blank sheet? Or is it easier to believe that, in another body, in another time, in another setting, we'll finally become the version of ourselves we've always wanted to be?
People cry out for change. They want to reinvent themselves, to be different from what they hate in themselves. But if they need a second chance to do that, are they really changing? Or are they just destroying their identity and painting a new face over the pieces that remain?
It just seems like an escape. The illusion that a restart is enough to stop being who you always were, as if your flaws aren't part of you.
What happens to the first life? Is it discarded like a rough draft? An annoying mistake no one wants to read again?
In that context, "change" becomes synonymous with forgetting. Becoming someone else so you don't have to carry the weight of remembering.
So I ask: is that really change, or simply cowardice? If I mess up again, do I deserve a third chance?
How many times do you have to restart before you accept who you are?
I think about it and I reach no conclusion.
Because to be able to change, you don't need to wait for the universe to hand you a blank page. It's about scribbling over the same stained sheet, even if the ink runs, even if the page is about to tear. It's about facing your reflection in the mirror without lying to yourself about who you are, and still choosing something different to be.
It's determination, not opportunity.
And there are examples. People, characters, whole stories of individuals who, without miracles, without convenient second chances, rebuilt themselves within the same life.
They bled, fell, were crushed by the weight of their own mistakes, but they stood up without asking the world for a tidy second chance.
That's precisely why their changes echo louder than any tale of second chances.
Maybe I'm right, maybe completely wrong. Maybe life really is generous to those who get a second chance. Or maybe it's just another way to run.
But inside me there's a certainty: if I were offered a second chance, I wouldn't change. I'd be exactly the same person I am now.
With the same contradictions, the same flaws, the same paranoias, the same tangled thoughts that define me.
Because, in the end, what is a second chance but a desperate attempt to escape what you can't bear to admit about yourself?
If I have to carry my mistakes to the last step, fine — they're mine. I'd rather keep walking with that weight than wake up one day not recognizing the reflection in the mirror.
This is my answer, or maybe my condemnation.
But it's undeniably my truth.
And what would yours be?