Lots of stuff in life need to be renewed- licences, library cards, tenancies…
The most important, most essential renewal out of all of these, however, is the renewal of self. I am one of the blessed few in this world who are being given a chance to restart their lives. Redefine oneself.
One of my favourite movies, High School Musical 3 (actually all three movies), highlights how one can redefine oneself… Beat the odds, break the status quo, despite everything. I like to tell people how each significant movie or song or book makes up a part of myself. HSM makes up the part of me that makes me go out of my way to show people more than one way of doing things. It’s honestly better than any motivational video I’ve ever seen, but then again, I first watched these movies as a 9-year-old. It built into me as I grew up.
High School Musical shows how despite the norm, people can change their lives in one simple way: through choice and commitment. How to respect one’s own feelings, putting self-health before the feelings of temporary people. And in the end, the whole story comes full circle. Not selfishness, but self-preservation. Not arrogance, but self-confidence.
They say in high school, everything changes. It’s the place where the underdogs come out on top, the popular crowd eventually gets drowned out in the sound of personality and genuineness. But, in reality, it’s quite different. There isn’t a central cast in real life. In real life, the central cast is whoever is your centre. your circle of friends, your group, and your life. As Don Miguel Ruiz says in his book The Four Agreements:
“…in that picture you are the director, you are the producer, you are the main actor or actress”
So you see, despite how well anyone knows you, they’re each in their own individual movies, and the choices they make in their own lives makes theirs. This is why it’s best to be fully convicted in your own movie to make it a blockbuster. Not for someone else, but for yourself, because in the end, you’re the one who’s going to either be proud of yourself or become a washed up good-for-nothing, just like the high school expectation.
Incidentally, my biggest obstacle wasn’t high school or even school. It was my self-esteem, being constantly criticised while growing up for the same ideals that made me who I am today. True, I made many mistakes along the way, but that is who I am, isn’t it? My mistakes? If I didn’t make any, I would be under the assumption that I can do no wrong. It’s true, I’ve had few real failures in this life (Alhamdulillah!), at least none that stopped me in my tracks, but that’s the thing about being resilient. You don’t let something as simple as failure make you think that you can’t be everything you ever dreamed and everything everyone convinced you that you cannot be. But the mistakes are essential. Because they make you realise where your weaknesses are. As the rule goes:
“A chain is only as strong as its weakest link”
So as it happens, mistakes teach us where our weakest links are. Where we completely lose our heads, or we just can’t get past that one barrier, because the barrier is within ourselves, not an external one. We can’t fight it because it may break us. So we have to learn where our limits are, and maybe redefine ourselves to ourselves, analyse where our true ambition lies. At a point, I used to believe that I wanted to graduate from a top university, but that was just an amalgamation of all my insecurities, and my expectations. Now I realise that my true ambition in that scenario was to break the expectations of other people, and that is accomplished simply enough by going to an above-average college, where instead of living under the imposing wing of relatives, I would be able to live free on my own. Independence. It is one of the things I value most in my loved ones, and myself. Needing someone is just fine, but not if it breaks self-esteem to not have someone along with for the ride.
Walk the road alone if you must, but walk it you must.
I happen to realise my limitations. It’s my impatience with life. I would like to change that, but here’s the worst thing about change, which rounds off this post quite nicely:
People don’t let you change. They would keep your trapped in the past, in your memories and mistakes like they haven’t made any. People would like to direct your movie, by telling you that you’re a minor role, that you were not made for anything more. That you can’t break their expectations, and improve to be something entirely new. It’s true, our hearts don’t change. They shouldn’t. Because then we would lose sight of our core values. But can our minds not? Can we not engineer our minds to fit the description of who we want to be? If the school valedictorian can end up in a 9 – 5 job with low pay, if they can admit defeat and change themselves entirely, can’t a school dropout become the shock factor, given the chance?
But as usual, it all comes down to our choices. If we continue making the same mistakes, the same decisions as we did before a milestone in our lives, naturally, nothing will change. And no matter what anyone says, change CAN sometimes be good. One simple decision to change your life, to grab hold of a steering wheel of a car spinning out of control… it can save your life. It can allow you to be anything. Survival is the first step to begin living. Then come the choices. Outlandish, if they are… realise your limitations, see if you can break those limitations. If your can’t, well, find a new road. Pushing against a barrier you can’t break is just wasting time. Learn to say “No”. It’s not being mean or being disagreeable. People who don’t understand never will. And people can hold you back only so far.
In the end, it’s your life hanging in the balance, not anyone else’s. At the end, if you can’t break the mold, the reality is, you won’t be able to become who you dream. It’s a very real threat. And part of being mature is understanding where your hard limit is. Where the point of no return is.
I am blessed that I’m moving to a new country, with at least a year to myself. Free from people who know who I was, who I am, or whom I will be. It’s like being handed a blank canvas after messing up the last one beyond hope. There’s a reason New Year resolutions don’t work. Because there’s a voice in your head, and all around you, saying that you’re in the same damn place and you’re the same damn person. How can you change? How can you restart the painting?
But now I’m being given a new life. A chance to dump all of my past. A new place to redefine myself. To break my own expectations. Complete the homework I always put off before, actually work for the exams, instead of expecting my English proficiency carrying me the whole way. I will be more than average, inshaAllah. People can damage you in more than one way. When you surround yourself with people who will only boost your self-esteem, you tend to forget how flawed you actually are, how far you still have to go. How it should never be enough. Trust me, it’s better to surround yourself with critics sometimes. When people compliment you on things you know you do best, you tend to focus on what you’re comfortable with instead of improving yourself. This makes you stagnant.
Some people think years can only be lost with failure. It can also be lost with success. It can be lost when you’re satisfied with who you are. Happiness on this earth is temporary. You’re fooling yourself, and in fact, hurting yourself if you allow yourself to always be happy. Being less than happy is healthy. As long as you’re not depressed, or dejected, it’s healthy. I’d lost a year in improving myself because I was already ahead of most people I knew. I neglected the parts of me that were not, because no one but myself saw those parts of me.
It’s July 1st today. It’s almost the middle of the year. I move into my new home in Malaysia at exactly the middle of July, which means it’s the midway of 2016. As far as I’m concerned, that’s my new year. I’m starting over. I’m metamorphosing. I’ll finish that book I started in January 2015. It’ll help me in university, and in fact, my whole life. I’ll stop making excuses about why I feel different.
I felt different because I’ve become astoundingly skilled at lying to myself and others without realising that I am. I can confidently convince myself (and others) that I know what the actual heck I’m doing, and we all know how belief can make anything real. I know certain truths about my life, but those things are not relevant now. It won’t make a difference in my university life, it won’t make a difference until life makes it. Those are those things that really aren’t in my hands, but with Allah’s (SWT). I put those things away, because…
“At its best, life is completely unpredictable”
– Christopher Walken
And as much as my impatient, overanalysing brain would disagree… that is best for me. I don’t expect anything. Not only for protection but, aren’t surprises the sweetest things in life?
It’s not too late. In fact, it’s exactly the right moment. I have the most precious commodities that life offers. Time and anonymity. Time to grab my life by the short hairs, without expectations of failure or disappointment, and make it do what I want it to do. Why tell myself I have the strength to get anything I want if I can’t even get myself to do what I want? I’m still weak. I just have to prepare myself to be exactly who I want to be when I receive that anonymity and hope that I change for the best. Become exactly who I should be, not who I was in the times I took the worst falls. InshaAllah. This is who I am today. A nice, imperfect girl who is capable of taking wrong turns, but is good at pretending to be perfect, and capable of being not so nice. :3
Time to woman up for a better tomorrow.
PEACE!
P. s. Thanks for reading through all that if y’all did ^_^
It. Starts. Now. 