(ENG) Learn! Learn! Learn!

Pic cr. to pinterest

Good morning!

Whenever you read this, I hope the brightness still feels just as warm as it does in the morning.

Today, I want to yapping (again) about something I’ve only started to realize after stepping into adulthood. Well, sometimes I still can’t believe that I’m already in my early adulthood. Ever since the COVID-19 outbreak, I’ve always felt like my age stopped at nineteen. Funny, isn’t it? But that’s really how it feels.

Improving yourself instead of proving yourself to others.

That one.

A sentence that hit me right in the corner of my mind and made me question a lot of things. Just this morning, I even wrote about it in my journal. I thought I had gone far, really far, and done many things I love. But the truth is, I’ve only been walking in circles. Moving a lot without actually going anywhere. Because all this time, I’ve been walking for others, for the sake of proving myself, seeking validation, wanting to be seen. It’s sad, but that’s the truth. Looking back, everything I did was just feeding my endless ego, without ever being kind to myself.

What’s the point of exhausting myself just to prove something to others?

What’s the point of chasing other people’s validation?

What’s the point of rushing so people will notice my existence?

Turns out, it’s not the world that’s unfair:

It’s me, who’s been living too long inside my own shell.

This realization in adulthood feels like waking up from a long sleep that never really rests your soul. You know how sometimes people use sleep as a disguise for how tired they actually are? Maybe that’s what I’ve been doing all along. I was tired, but I refused to admit it, because I didn’t want to be seen as incapable of handling life. I was frustrated, but I still wanted to look fine, as if I could always face the world with a smile. But life is mine. All the time that exists in this world was created for me, and it would be such a waste if I spent it only trying to please others.

If I fill my life only with pleasing others, following their expectations, then when will I ever have the time to make myself happy?

And we live in the present, not in the past, nor in the future.

We live only for today, and we survive for today.

Just focus on improving yourself, learning new things, because there’s still so much we don’t know. That’s what I’ve realized more and more now. The more I learn, the more I realize how little I actually know. And that awareness is something we must embrace with the widest heart. We have to understand that our glass is still half full, and it’s our task to keep filling it each day. To be open to learning from others, we have to empty our glass first, so there’s space for new knowledge to pour in. Never think your glass is already full, to the point where you stop learning, that’s just pathetic.

I want every phase of my life to be filled with new things to learn, to accept, and to improve, something I can carry for my future, both in this world and the hereafter. Sometimes we get too caught up chasing worldly knowledge that we forget our eternal life lies in the afterlife. That’s still a big homework for me: finding the balance between the two.

Let’s keep striving to be better every day. Improve yourself as much as you can. As long as Allah SWT still allows us to wake up in the morning, that means He’s still giving us another chance, to become better than yesterday.

Good luck!