A Million Dreams.

Happy New Year!
It’s 2018 and I’m freaking out already – LOL.

Reflecting back to how my 2017 has been, it was a total crazy ride. I mean, what’s life if there’s no adventure, right?

I made several important decisions for my life. I tried my luck and failed. I learned many things new, involved in a big-scale project. I saw this life in different perspective and it open my eyes to something I’ve never seen. I didn’t travel a lot this year though, but I’m happy. I am happy to say that I have worked hard.

The thing that I fear the most is staying in the same place as I ever before. Those who know me knows exactly how viciously I take risk. Looking back to that time, I just can’t believe it myself. I was in that thin line between stupid and brave. Yet, I made it. I think it’s not me who made it. It’s God’s will. I understand that opportunity don’t just knock for no reason but to which timing it comes, I believe that’s a Greater Source who put it on a scheme I can’t help but to be grateful for.

I was about to put my 2017 #bestnine on my Instagram feeds, but I don’t think those images with most likes represent how I perceive my best nine moments in 2017. I kept those to myself, because no image can portrays courage and determination I put in doing my work and living my life. No image can figure those people who made me survive during those hardships. Nor that it can represent any of my happiness and gratefulness of being able to pass them all.

So, what’s for 2018?

As I made some important decisions during 2017, I bet 2018 is the year in which I need to prove to myself that I can make 2017’s dream comes true. I found out that last year’s best lesson for me is to never rely on anyone/anything to define your happiness and it is okay to let go of things you can’t control. I am done putting too much expectation on an ideal environment – I realized nothing is perfect. It’s time for me to embrace imperfection and move along with it.

I also realized that the only one who need a proof is me. Even though I tried hard to believe that ‘life is not a competition’, the fact always says otherwise. Whether you made it or it’s just a social norm that exists without us wanting to be part of it, it always there. People would compare. I would compare. But now I learned that I do not need to compare myself with others – I don’t know what battle they had gone through. The more I tried to look up to others as a competitor, the more I will suffer because it always not enough. The only one I should compare is me. The old versus the new me.

Of course it does not mean that I wouldn’t raise myself as high as something/someone I want to surpass. Benchmarking is very important to push myself forward and I always will. However, just because I want to reach certain level of success, it does not mean that I will value myself to the extent that I am better than him/her; nor that I will degrade myself as worse than him/her should I fail. I want to see myself as a human being who are in the process of being made into something. I want to see as naked as that.

Someone said to me the other day that you should kept one resolution that you definitely can make it, instead of keeping a bucket of list you imagine yourself would fit. This advice got me right. I made like 20-30 “what I want to achieve and do in twenty something” but only 3-5 that I really make it (it’s still counted as an achievement, anyways!). But that doesn’t make me feeling satisfied, leaving another 15 list unchecked.
So this year, I tried to narrow down my resolution into the big 5, the most important resolutions I need to really-really achieve. Something big. Something that is the 20% defining cause out of 80% impact I will get. I will forget those list that I thought I wouldn’t be able to achieve due to ‘the big 5’ that I will put 200% focus toward it.

As the number might seems small, I believe that there are a million dreams inside the big 5. That it isn’t about me. I involved other people’s dream inside my dream. I was also into someone else’s dream. I put myself into a bigger picture, yet even if it seems that I am the smallest element, I believe that these big 5 will somehow make an impact. If it’s not now, it should be someday in the future… which is somewhat near.

“I think of what the world could be
A vision of the one I see
A million dreams is all it’s gonna take
A million dreams for the world we’re gonna make”
– A Million Dreams, The Greatest Showman

(iya iya eike belum move on~)

~tbc.

Featured image: Becky Phan. Unsplash.