Life and Faith

2017. It was a year of disappointment. After a tough year in 2016, I had high hopes and inspiration for 2017. It was going to be my bounce-back year. It was the year that I learn from all the difficulty and hardship from 2016 and blossom in all areas of my life. Goals and standards were set high and my aspiration was it's top. However, it all fell short.  The start of the first semester, I was feeling quite good. I had my major sorted out. I was quite confident, even overconfident. After a mediocre 2016, I was determined to achieve the marks I did in 2015. I was spending more time studying, I had a determined focus and my expectations were high. However, when I receive my mark for the first test I did. I was shocked. I couldn't understand it, why did I receive such a mediocre mark? I put in so much effort in my studies. If this was 2015, I would have got at least 17/20. Soon I chalked it up as just bad luck, and I will do better in my next test. However, this was not the c...

Lately, I’ve been stressed and feeling quite down. I’ve been thinking a lot about myself – how I need to find a graduate job, how I need to find more time to read, how I need to use my time more productively. It feels like my focus has been restricted to only me and my own problems. All these thoughts have made me feel quite overwhelmed and have consumed my mind. I feel like I no longer have the energy for other things outside of myself. Let me ask you the questions I’ve been asking myself: How many times do you think about yourself in a day? How often do you relate things back to yourself? For many of us, the answer is countless. From when we wake up to when we go to sleep. Even when we are dreaming, we are constantly thinking about ourselves. This can be study, work, or relationships, we are constantly turning it back to ourselves and how it will affect us - our pride, our ego, our self-image and our self-esteem in life. We always seem to have a ‘me’ variabl...