Day 9: Some words of wisdom that spoke to me

Continuing this challenge again in 2021! Happy new year everyone!!! (Hehe sorry for being too lazy)

When I took some time to think about this topic: “what are some words of wisdom that speak to you?”, I was initially thinking about the books I’ve read recently. Some of it were good, best-selling books and I really gained many interesting views from there even though I haven’t finished it all (but it’s ok, I have a principle: self-development books are meant to be read only when I need it). From Mindset, I learnt to become more a growth-mindset person. From Outlier, I learnt that there are so many factors to success — either it’s hard work or privilege — but let’s be more focus on our 10,000 hours of gaining expertise rather than look at someone’s privilege. From The Courage To Be Disliked, I learnt that changing is scary but possible, as long as we have courage (I wrote a few in Day 8).

To choose is such a perplexing thing to do, and all of a sudden I recalled words of wisdom told by my Biology teacher in high school. That was said when my friends & I were going to face one of the roughest period in our teenage era, a time when we all had high ambition to get into our dream universities, while facing crisis as our high school journey would end up soon. I have quoted this on my old Tumblr post:

It is true that “the harder you hold the sand, the smoother it flows out of grip”. When I was eighteen, my teacher’s words really hit me hard. Now that I’m on my twenty-something, it hits me again, even harder. Recently I became so ambitious, I just feel that the sense of ambitiousness is coming back again to me after gone through a long time of losing it (honestly, my uni life was taking it away from me and now I’m feeling like meeting my long-lost friend). I’m happy that I found something that I could put my passion and ambition again, but later on it’s slowly becoming a double-edged knife when I became “too much” in pursuing what I really want. After two years of working on the same role in my first job, I got stuck already and started to look for other opportunities out there. I either applied or got noticed by some companies, some of it were my dream companies. I went full throttle, but little did I realize that I kept making blunder: I always put my hopes too high. I went through one interview to another, one test to another, one preparation to another, while I forgot to not making my hope jar full. When I knew I couldn’t make it, it suddenly became a burden, and I couldn’t find the light in the darkness anymore. At the same time, I realized that I put my high hopes also because I want to escape from my current situation as soon as possible, but I didn’t really take some time to think clearly about my reason, my goals, my purpose, and my value. Until I was rejected for the nth time, I started to rethink about the things that I really want to pursue, and why I want to strive for it.

And when I was in my turmoil, I found a verse:

“Whoever submits his whole self to Allah, and is a doer of good, has grasped indeed the most trustworthy hand-hold: and with Allah rests the End and Decision of (all) affairs.”  [QS. Luqman: 22]

And it lead my mind to another verse, one of the verses that I remember the most:

“But perhaps you hate a thing and it is good for you, and perhaps you love a thing and it is bad for you. Allah knows, while you know not.”  [QS. Al-Baqarah: 216]

Then I recalled Bu Esih’s words again, how we should pray for the best, because sometimes the thing that we push for is actually not the best thing for us. It never be good to obtrude over anything because the decision of all affairs is indeed not ours. And that’s when I changed my mindset. I loose myself, still gave some things a shot but now with a clearer purpose while took it easy. I kept telling myself, the best is yet to come.

And after I let go all of my unnecessary and unclear ambitions, started it all over again with low expectation, while praying for the best… the miracles really happened. Better thing (as I don’t know if it’s the best yet) did come for me — not earlier, not later, just on time. I don’t know how it works, but it finally arrived. Surely we never know how universe works, but just bear in mind: pray for the best, and undoubtedly it won’t hurt that bad when your efforts don’t seem to be “paid”, yet gives you double-pleasure when you finally know the meaning of “the best”.

In the end, this last one year really gives me valuable lessons. At times it was hard, but I wonder if there was no pandemic maybe I wouldn’t thrive this far.

Happy 2021, guys. The best is yet to come.