the left hand

You wake every day wishing you were happier, more successful, free, but instead you are stuck in a perpetual cycle of mediocrity.

You go through your day with no deeper purpose behind your actions. You go to work, do what needs to be done, go home, watch TV, then go to bed. It’s all surface. A cycle that you are all too familiar with.

Occasionally, you get hit by a spark of inspiration for something, but it comes and goes so quick you are left questioning yourself, “What am I doing? Is this everything there is to my life?”

You are not alone.

Life is a force that drives you and me and all the others towards unknown interconnected futures. Most have no clue where they’re heading. Some are passengers while life takes control of the wheel. Passengers in the dark.

But you, what if you’re not a passenger and is the one behind the wheel instead?

It is your future after all. The unknown is your light.

If you think about it and stopped right now to focus intently, you can catch a glimpse of your unknown. You focus enough times it starts to feel like you’re already there. You have the power of being able to visualise where you want to be in life one day.

This vision that lies within your mind and heart, however, is not tangible until you make it so. It’s a vision for now. It’s a concept of your future. It’s not set in stone and could change. And this vision gets clearer the more work you put into knowing it.

Picture this

The ground shakes. You can hear a rumbling in the sky. You look to see but it’s too bright. There’s dust everywhere. Sparks of light. The wind is howling. It’s getting louder. You don’t know what’s happening. The noise and light become unbearable, so you pick up the pace but then, everything stops. A person. It’s you. You are looking at a better version of yourself. Fit, nice clothes, looks happy, oozing charisma. That’s a nice car.

That’s what your vision is like.

It doesn’t just appear instantly, there’s a build-up of momentum that happens first, there’s confusion, there’s a chaotic feeling, you feel lost at first, everything doesn’t make sense and there’s a loud, annoying voice somewhere telling you to run.

This momentum is your purpose. When you have a vision, there’s no denying that you also have a purpose. Your purpose is to make that vision a reality. You can’t do it straight away though. It takes time, it ensues chaos. Other people often stop in their tracks when the chaos start. It’s too much. There’re so many possibilities. And then they go off and run away to choose the path of least resistance. Which to their defence, isn’t the worst choice, but if you want success, it just isn’t the correct choice.

You’re one of the few who wants success, realise that you don’t have just one purpose; you have a lot of purpose. And each purpose that you serve are like peels of onion that you remove each leading you to your highest purpose. The core of your being. Your light. Your success.

When does this momentum start then?

Well, as silly as this sounds, it started when you were born. But lately, instead of gaining more momentum, it stopped. It hasn’t progressed. Why? Because no one told you about it. You’re unaware. Instead, you were taught to forget about your momentum, your growth, and instead, help build someone else’s. Sound familiar?

This doesn’t mean that everyone lied to you, and you should now just think about yourself. No, this means that from now on, instead of solely working for others’ dreams, you need to work on yours.

Now that you’re up to speed, here’s the beginning of your life. The one where you’re the main character.

Action.

First, you need to learn to have a vision. You start by facing your own chaos, your problems, and the things that clutter your mind. Your fitness, your nutrition, your habits, your insecurities and your spirituality. These are the things you have control over. Your goal is the find the roots that create problems in these aspects of your life and then you implement solutions.

You need to face the confusion and tell that voice that wants you to run away to shut up. You need to wake up and do things with your purpose in mind, to solve the problems in your life.

It’s not going to be easy; it’s going to be challenging and the challenge is what will make it worth it. You do it one at a time and slowly but surely. You don’t want to just uproot the surface then leave the roots to flourish again.

As you progress, you gain deeper awareness of yourself. You catch things you’ve never noticed before and your process becomes quicker.

After some time, you move on onto more complex problems, your relationships, your search for success, your freedom. These aspects involve not just yourself but others as well. When others are involved, things get complicated and being able to navigate that space takes time and effort.

The challenge when you start facing your problems come from your thoughts. Your pre-conceived ideas. “This is not easy; I should just give up. I can’t go on, I’m not strong enough. I need a break.” This is the voice inside of your head, but this is all that there is to it, a voice. A thought. These are all just concepts that layer on top of your actual reality. This voice was given to you by society to keep you from seeing your true power. Your potential. When the voice tells you to run, run towards it and face it. After all, not feeling strong enough just means you need more practise, difficult challenges are just an opportunity to grow, and failing just means you have more to learn.

Remember, your actions and sensory perceptions in the moment are what make up your experience. What you are experiencing right now is all that there is to what is real. Not “you’re weak” “you’re a failure” or “you should give up.”  When your actions are aligned to what your vision is, nothing else matters but that.

Your actions are what ripples across your life until you realise your vision. Not your thoughts and most definitely not that annoying voice.

Your future is an experience you haven’t experienced yet. The present is the experience you are in right now. What you do in the present ultimately affects what you experience in the future.

Like a domino effect.

“Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.” – James Clear, author, Atomic Habits

Your vision is the concept, your purpose is the inspiration, your action is the experience. The only way for you to get an idea of who you are going to be is to act in line with your vision. At the same time, you must learn to find beauty in not knowing fully who you are going to be and find solace in the process of doing so. The process isn’t linear, it’s a maze of ups and downs and lefts and rights.

Now go

Learn to see your vision, and act accordingly. Start by solving your problems and do things with purpose.

When we think of overcoming something, we tend to think of defeating someone else. We try to compete with them in our heads, we want their lives to be less good than ours, or if their life is better, we beat ourselves up and call ourselves failures. We don’t recognise that to overcome something, is not to overcome an external source but to overcome ourselves internally.

Currently, focusing more on what other people are doing seems to be norm. All the 'my days', Instagram stories, posts, tweets, etc., have become staples in our everyday life. The notifications we are bombarded with, someone commented on this, someone liked this, someone sent you an e-mail. These all make us want to look at it straightaway like a dog learning to sit when told so it can get a treat. We are well-trained people. Too well-trained we don’t know it’s being done to us.

Each day, we are losing more and more of who we are and becoming nothing but pawns in a system built to destroy our spirits, ourselves, and our identity.

And what do we do to stop this? Nothing.

Most, if not all have succumbed to this lifestyle. Pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth. We have started to embody the sins the bible warned us about. And guess what? We are proud of it.

Now, I wrote this article not to preach the bible or to tell you you’re a sinner. I wrote this article to gently remind you of the path this world has taken a liking to. A path to self-destruction.

On a collective level.

We have become weak men. We have become consumed by our own destruction, and we don’t even realise it.

The only way to combat this is if we start to look for the truth. Not the truth everyone is talking about, not the truth we can read written by someone. No. The truth that is within us. We need to look within ourselves. Introspect. The truth so hidden in our hearts that it takes effort, it takes courage, it takes even our whole lives to find it. Because when we do, that’s when we’ve overcome ourselves. That’s when we know that we didn’t have a self to overcome anyway. It is when we know that life is merely a blip in our cosmic journey.

Had a photoshoot yesterday with my sister at Casuarina Beach. I am using my new Canon EOS 850D with EF-S 17-55mm and EF-S 50mm lenses.

We got to the beach at the most perfect time, the golden hour as they call it. This is my first time doing portraits and it felt amazing and awesome!! I really enjoy taking photos and I must say, the photos turned out great.

Where are we all headed? What is this journey called life? Are we merely passengers or do we get to drive?

When faced with a difficult question, “What is life?”, most people would draw a blank. Life is just something you can’t explain. It is a mystery that no one has even come close to figuring out. This is the case for most people—most. There are a few who doesn’t have the privilege to look for answers. Instead, they experience what life is all about and this becomes their meaning. The answers look for them.

As a 23-year-old male living in Australia, life for me is something that feels like a movie. It’s when you experience your first kiss. It’s when you feel your first heartbreak. It’s when you find the perfect song. It’s when you are so in the moment that everything else fades away. That’s life. Life is what keeps you going through it all. Not just in the happy moments, but through everything and it doesn’t always come easy.

When I was a kid, I was bullied but didn’t know that I was getting bullied. I was a bully and didn’t know that I was bullying people. I wasn’t aware of myself. This magical journey of waking up every day in this body to experience what people call life is both a blessing and a curse. It gives us the power to become whoever, whatever, be wherever, and yet we are limited until we figure out that we are not. Sometimes it takes people a lifetime to figure it out and by then it’s almost always too late. Some figure it out young, without any effort. Some will die without ever figuring it out consumed by the pressure and influence that society put on their shoulder. And lastly, there are some who figures it out at just the right time through courage, inspiration, and perseverance.

When we are challenged, we quickly put up our defences to prepare for the oncoming attack. Sometimes there is no warning, and we are forced to adapt as we go and try to learn how to overcome the hurdle with only nothing but our knowledge and skill. What we lack in skill, we make up with our willingness to accept the outcome. If we lack the will, our skills are useless. We face the same hurdle again and again and we fail multiple times but, in the effort to conquer, that is when we gain wisdom. The outcome after having been challenged could lead us down a dark path or it could enlighten us about our purpose. Either way, it changes who we are inside, and this change becomes our identity and ultimately, a hidden clue to figuring out who and what we truly are.

Life is finding order in the chaos that everything is. It’s about choice and learning how to navigate a world full of hidden potential through the sunniest of days and torrential rain. It is like a treasure hunt and you’re the hunter. There are treasures everywhere but to find what’s really for you is up to you. It is up to your hunger in seeking the truth and belief in your capabilities. It is up to you to fan the spark that ignites within your soul and recognise that there is no limit to what you can do. It sounds simple, ‘you just have to believe in yourself.’ No. Believing in yourself is only the first step. You will be led down a path full of twists and opposition to a point where you start second guessing your choices. The only thing that is clear, however, is that you only listen to the voice within you. You don’t listen to what others have to say, you don’t listen to society and base your actions with what they consider correct. You follow the beat of your own drum and make sure that you don’t lose sight of your belief, of your values, and of yourself.

The twists and turns in life is what makes yours unique from everybody else. There is no guessing where you will end up after you’ve started your journey at day one, the day you were born. At first, it is our parents who guide us, most of us anyway. Some are born without a parent to rely on. Some are born to trek this world on their own. Although eventually, we learn the ways of the world. We learn what’s right and what’s wrong. We are fed with ideas and beliefs and deceit so powerful we can’t distinguish it from the truth. We are forced to live in a society where those who speak their mind are ostracised because they are a threat to a falsified system. And then we learn to escape.

I was in a roller coaster that was only going up when I first started doing drugs—or so I thought. In the beginning, I was curious how it felt, but then that curiosity turned into hunger. A hunger for more and more without regards to my health and how it was changing my life as fast as it could. My hobbies became boring, my passion and likes became difficult to do, my days felt dull unless I was high. I neglected my future altogether and focused solely on living in the moment. I felt alive. I was alive. And I was going nowhere. For a while, I was okay with it. I was fine where I was, and I didn’t care about anything else. I was a pawn of the system, and I didn’t know it. I thought I was finally free from the constraints of everyday life. Days went by and as soon I got that hit, there wasn’t anything in the world that mattered to me. I thought I finally had something to live for, this is the life. This is what it feels like. My problems were numbed out by the drugs, and I didn’t have to face them anymore. I created a cage for myself and thought that I was a free. I created an illusion of freedom in my head, a maze I can’t solve, a puzzle I can’t comprehend, and I was trapped. I wasn’t free, I was trapped. My escape had failed.

This went on for a couple of years and there were days where I could take on the world without a stumble in my stride. And there were days where I didn’t want to show my face to the world but only hide in the dark corners of comfort. It came and it went, and it was like I was fighting for control. It was an internal struggle within me that I couldn’t explain to anyone. Nor did I want to explain. It was a fight and I needed help, but I didn’t want to ask for help. I wanted to be able to win it on my own and I’m still in that fight. There is a silver lining to my story. It’s the persistence, the courage and the perseverance that I knew I was exhibiting that kept me from losing it all. I was using the strength I didn’t know I had. I wasn’t strong because I wanted to be, I was strong because I had no choice. I was figuring it out and something inside of me didn’t want me to.