Perhaps

Why despair when you're doing fine right now? Perhaps at a slower pace than before, perhaps more stressful and harder than before. Things are not the same anymore, perhaps you'd made a lot of mistakes yourself. Lost things, and gained something new along the long journey. A fictional character once said;

"You look like a man that has lost something.
But that's not necessarily a bad thing.
Because when you lose something, you gain something else in return."

Nothing's ever free in this world, and everyone learn and improve through their mistakes, unless they did not fathom their mistakes. But perhaps that's why friends exists, they are our moral compass after all. You seem to possess a much better story to tell than the story I wrote. So why the long face sometimes? Perhaps you have your problems too, not surprising, everyone does have their own problems, their own lessons to learn, their own views in life. Perhaps that the story I have is much darker and depressing than your's is just an illusion and you're just censoring out all the details of your story, the deeper, darker parts. Perhaps I'm missing the mark most of the time. But I'm trying to not miss the bullseye so many times so frequently.

Perhaps it's time we all be more joyful, give more love, give less hate, lest we want another war world.

Perhaps life's like a game. In a game you level up so you can face off stronger enemies, you may die, but the experience never drops, and you will slowly learn how to beat the final boss. Same applies in real life, you gain experience points every day, even if you're studying in college, universities, school, working or even just slacking at home. It may be slow and little, but you learn, and you add a new skill to your arsenal, you'll progress through the game, measured by a percentage system. Boss battles are like daily challenges in life you  take on against. Died in the game? Reload, play again, don't give up. Made a mistake in real life? Pick yourself up, stand up strong and tall, and start walking once again, making sure you don't make the same mistake again, of course.

Perhaps life is as simple as that, and we are the ones who are making it complicating. Perhaps life's like a story, a novel written in ink, you can cross out lines and paragraphs, but it'll never be erased. All you can do is to do your best to move on and improve. But mistakes are still bound to happen anyways.