No Pressure, You’re Doing Great

I am a night person. I feel and do my best when I stay up till 4 am, and I am able to do 20 things before Tahajjud (morning special prayer). Finishing most of my tasks (writing my newsletters, blog posts, preparing notes and doing my assignments) early in the morning and doing the right things on time makes me feel like the best version of myself, and this attitude is one I try to carry with me into other areas of my life. As a result, I also love the calm state of things - I love solitude and the peace around. Pockets of time then would allow me to have the peace to do more things without working under pressure and starting all over and also gives me the opportunity to spend the rest of my day the way I want. But not everyone is like me, and not everyone should be.

Photo by Luca Bravo on Unsplash

Sometime last year, I had a conversation with a friend about something she had been struggling with. She spoke about how she has never liked to attend night classes, and it also applied to sacrificing her sleep for anything. She has never done that but now she has to. "A medical student must stay up late in order to pass." The ginger she had before becoming a student was lost on her, and she told me that it was okay to take some time before getting into the groove of things.

I think there is quite a lot to be said about internet trends and how in a bid to strive for what we consider a better life, we sometimes, as a collective, lose sight of nuances that should otherwise be observed. The recent obsession with productivity and doing things a certain way is not a message that will be useful to everyone, and recognizing this will go a long way in reducing the feelings of guilt, defeat, and fear that might accompany some of us who consume such media.

The same way you don’t expect a fish to climb trees, or a monkey to swim underwater, is the same way some people are engineered to move differently, to process life and the information around them at their own pace.

On a daily basis, we unconsciously ingest a lot of information telling us the best way to live life. Everything is being compartmentalized and commercialized these days, including productivity! The amount of “How To become a straight A student,” WhatsApp statuses I see daily is a testament to this fact. And while we partake in these cultural subsets (because, let’s not lie, learning these things can be very useful to our growth and development) I think a more fruitful conversation to be had is the importance of self-mastery and knowledge.

How well do you know yourself? Do you know what you want from life? Do you know how to listen to your body and your mind?

One of my blessed bro, Shaykh AbdulBaasit memorized the Qur'an in a year and came back the following year to write both WAEC and JAMB, he did not only cleared it all but graduated as one of the best students. Another friend of mine, Qaasim had to wait for years before getting admitted into the university, after his first year, he secured a scholarship that would pay his fees throughout his stay in the University.

Growing up, I was never subjected to any form of pressure from presumed friends about school or results but I had a father who would say "If you can't keep friends who are better than you academically, don't keep friends at all". This made me drop the idea of keeping friends without purpose. But it was shocking when I came online and reality hit me. I started seeing myself as a failure because I felt "others were doing it better". When I felt I was not doing things the way I had seen others do them, or in the same frequency, but lately, I have decided that it’s best to let things go and to take my time. The fact that everyone is learning a tech skill now(even though I am a computer engineer even before starting to get rooted online) , or posting all their career progress on LinkedIn, and I don’t feel any motivation to do the same, doesn’t mean there is anything wrong with me. I shouldn’t be spurred into action because other people are active and I am scared of missing out on whatever is out there.

And so it’s okay if you are not excited about everything that’s going on around you. If you don’t have the same goals as everyone else; if you see a different life for yourself. Life is full of variables - and there has never been one skinny road to success. As a matter of fact, the beautiful thing about success is that you get to define what it means for you. For some, it could be having the best car around and owning a mansion in one of the most beautiful places around the world. For others, it could be having just enough to live like a dignified human being.

If this is the moment you want to start taking action, breathe a little slower, relax and take your time to savour, then do just that. If you want to hibernate before you ease into the ebb and flow of the crazy world teeming around you, then that’s fine as well. Wanting enough means knowing yourself, knowing when to slow down, when to take things easy. Knowing that it’s okay to walk while everyone else is running.

No pressure, you’re doing great.