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Coping With Mediocrity

You look at your grade: a C. It’s not bad, it’s not like you failed, but it’s not good either. Maybe you should’ve handed that essay sooner; that might’ve boosted those marks. Then again you’d be losing sleep the day before it was due since you’ve put it off for too long. Because of good reason, of course: inspiration doesn’t come easy for people like you; you work in bursts of energy. Unfortunately for you, that burst never came until the very last minute. Stupendous.

Did you hear? A friend of yours landed a job on that international organization he always admired. Well, it’s not a surprise; he’s always been smart, heck he could be president by the age of 42 if he wanted to.

What about that girl in class who’s pretty much invisible but recently got sent off on a scholarship to Europe? Yeah, well, she’s not so different from the guy before: smart, focused, determined…

How does it feel to work hard, I wonder? I’ve never been sure if my absolute best was hard enough. They say that every person has their own learning style: some consistent, some don’t, but all end up successful if they “work hard enough.” Of course, then we have learning capacity and IQ; can’t argue with what nature’s given you, right?

You sound like you’re whining.

Am I? I still don’t have an answer to my question: what does it mean to work hard?

You tell me.

Study every day? If you can’t focus, what’s the point, you’re not taking in anything.

Never lose sight of your goals? That won’t help if your goals keep changing.

Set a high standard in life? No point if you don’t have the drive to meet them.

Be inspired, often. And then what?

Maybe I should do something else with my life. And waste all that time before this? Yeah, I mean, it won’t be a total waste. And risk the things you have now? The relationships you have now? The assets you have now?

But I feel like I can do this. That’s what you said before you got a D on you Calculus test. That’s what you said when you promised yourself to finish that report in a month but instead taking it well over three. That’s what you said about graduating before delaying it twice. Why do you keep trusting your gut after its history of deceiving you?

Maybe because it’s the only thing I’ve got left. Well, it’s not good enough.

So what should I do then?

Maybe you should stay mediocre.

I don’t want to.

 

 

Disclaimer: Not everything in this piece is true.

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Invictus

Let’s face it, kid.
People try hard everyday, and fail.
People quit.
It’s not a matter of ‘when’, really –
or even ‘how’;
it’s ‘why’.

Life is hard.
It doesn’t wait for anybody,
it won’t offer you any handout.
But I began to believe this is a good thing.
It separates the quitters from the winners,
the weak from the strong,
the good from the great.

And what I’ve learned is that
some people might not make it.
Cause, see, we tend to listen
when the world tells us we can’t do something.
We learn to live a lie,
either ours
or someone else’s.
So you have to fight.

Make no mistake, there are those
who will try to keep you down.
They’ll use fear as their weapon.
Will they make a coward out of you?
And what are you gonna do
when your back’s against the wall?
You’re gonna cry?
You’re gonna quit,
like everyone else?
I don’t think so, not on my time.

I once heard a man say that
hearts were made for pain, that
hearts were made to be broken.
Maybe that’s true.
We’re all gonna fall victim to
pain and anger at one point.

But you know what I’ve learned?
Some hearts –
some hearts are unconquerable.
They take hit after hit,
blow after blow,
shot after shot…
and then they fall down.
And then,
against all odds:
they get back up.

__________
Original video.

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Assets

People envy others because of what they don’t have. It’s the natural order of things, I guess. Be it wealth, skill, opportunity; some people just have it better than others.

I often ask myself, “What do I have to do to make it in this world, and the world after? What do I have?” More often than not, I just don’t have the answer. Am I just going to float off into the dark abyss of the modern world?

Some has the skills to do it, they create things for the world to see; some has the brains, easily bypassing academic obstacles blocking their way to success; and by sheer luck. These are (worldly) assets essential to our success. I know they say that skills can be trained, that you don’t have to be smart to succeed, that if you work hard enough opportunities will come flying to your doorstep…

But what if I need to be smart? What if an opportunity is already presented in front of me and I’m not ready, thus risk ruining that opportunity forever? In a moment like that is when I truly feel like I have nothing of value, just trash.

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Love and Intentions on Valentine’s Day

It’s that time of year again, the middle of the second month of the year, also known as Valentine’s Day; a day where many in the West like to mark as a day full of love and romance, of sweet words and chocolate. Of course, year after year some – or most – of the Muslim community choose not to celebrate it, because of reasons many of us know already. Some like to take things to the next level, and Indonesian Muslims just can’t seem to have enough of the spotlight.

This year it’s a meme going around of pictures of themselves holding up a paper sign saying “I am Muslim, No Valentine’s Day.” For the proponents of the fad, this looks like the perfect idea to uphold Islamic values and traditions and reject the West’s ‘notion’ of love. Just as it was for Christmas, Indonesian Muslims find no limit in resources to stay reactive against cultural ‘invasions’ and voice their ever so grave concerns, fueling their annual sensationalist reactionism. This, at least to me, makes it unclear of what the intentions behind their actions really are.

For starters, holding up a sign that says you chose not to celebrate a certain holiday is – in its own way – unclear in the first place. What are we trying to say when we hold up that sign? Do we really think that by holding up a sign, then repeat it year after another for an unknown number of times, will push young Muslims into rethinking Valentine’s Day? Do we really think that that is an effective solution? Or is it that it isn’t the case at all?

Is it that we do this not as a solution, but to merely show that we’re sticking to core Islamic principles? This kind of holier-than-thou mentality is not only dangerous for the development of an Islamic mindset, but also highly hypocritical – which is ironic when we think about it. Like I said, this meme makes our intentions very ambiguous, and I am in no place to judge; but if you’re one of those who joined the bandwagon, I kindly ask you to rethink your intentions, for “The reward of deeds depends upon the intentions, and every person will get the reward according to what he has intended. […]” Sahih Al-Bukhari.

This doesn’t mean that we’re free to celebrate a highly commercialized ‘holiday’ perpetuated by the inherently capitalist and imperialist West, but we should learn to be smart about our actions and also our reactions. We can start by learning what it means to love in Islam – and not just by copying the Prophet ﷺ, but by rethinking the conditions of our modern world and act accordingly.

Wallahu a’lam.

 

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Dreams

It’s been quite a while since I’ve written anything, what with graduation so close and I’m still not sure if I’ve got even half of my final project done. That being said, I still want to keep this blog alive and to just write in general.

As my friends and colleagues graduate one by one, news of them getting this job, or that job, or their business growing stronger, or their dream job getting closer was becoming more common. What I discovered amid all the stories was that different people have different dreams. Some higher than others, some more realistic while others dream as high as they can dream. And while I’m in no position to judge them, I see patterns on how people choose the steps they make, albeit just a little.

We’re all being told that the most successful of people are those who dream big. Those who dream small can only get so far until they run out of dreams and settle down for good. That’s why we have to dream as high as we can, because the sky’s the limit, right?

It’s true that there are successful billionaires and entrepreneurs who started off with barely anything, but with their dreams and perseverance they become what they are now. But to many, especially the underprivileged, the sky is much closer to them than others.

I know someone who wants to be an inspiration to people, a person of knowledge who wants to change their nation by educating those near him, and also wants to be a minister and bring change from behind the table. Then there’s another one who aims to make more than just a proper living from his small business, and to be someone who can give jobs to other people and help those who are worse off than they are. But then there’s one, after graduating, just wants to have a stable income as a civil servant, to marry and build a family, then settle down. Another one, who avoided an opportunity at an offering that almost guarantee them to acquire millions, chose to work in the financial industry instead.

Special cases happen here and there, but the pattern stays: privileged (or rich, depends on how you look at it) people dream bigger than their underprivileged counterpart. The bigger you dream, the more you achieve. By that logic, privileged people will give birth to even more privileged people and in turn they dream big and achieve more, while the underprivileged just the opposite; a summary of Robert Kiyosaki’s book, if anything.

Will, then, this cycle of the rich becoming richer ever stop? Of course this has more to do with information asymmetry than anything else; but in a country like Indonesia, will the poor ever be informed as much as the rich?

As for me, I’m still not sure what my dreams are. Heck, I can’t even focus on my work right now. I hope it’s just a phase.