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The Test of Becoming
If you're like me, and like countless others trying to do life right,
you don’t always doubt yourself.
You doubt what could happen.
"What if God doesn't want this for me?”
"What if I’m building something not written for me?”
"What if I’m walking toward a future He never planned?”
That’s not insecurity. That’s the test.
“Do people think they will be left to say: ‘We believe,’ and not be tested?”
(Al-Ankabut 29:2)
As life went on, we've started to treat God like a vending machine.
Put in a few prayers, and expect the reward right after.
That's how the idea of Manifestation works right?
"Fake it till you make it"
"Live like it, act like it, and it's yours."
However, no matter how many successful people believe in "speaking something into existence,"
they also know that nothing is achieved without work.
You simply can not speak something into existence,
without putting in the work.
In (Ar-Ra'd 13:11), Allah swt Himself says,
"Indeed, Allah will not change the condition of a people until they change what is in themselves."
Even in the Bible,
(James 4:10)
"Humble yourselves before the Lord, and He will lift you up."
Muslim, Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, Atheist, whatever you are, the universal belief is the same.
If you want to achieve something, then you must first change yourself, for the better.
It took me a while to understand that, it still does.
"How do I actually trust that with my heart?"
"What if it just doesn't work out?"
But that's when belief and trust in God come into play.
This is the dark we talk about when we say "trusting through the light and the dark."
That doubt of being successful? Getting to your goals?
That voice in your head: "What if it doesn't work out?"
But what if it does?
What if it works out, and not only that,
what if it changes your life?
You wouldn't lose anything if you try and fail.
If you fail, you gain the experience and the knowledge.
But if it works out?
You gain everything.
The Burden of Becoming
I often find myself sitting in my apartment bedroom late at night, after everyone's asleep,
absentmindedly zoning out while staring at my laptop screen.
My hood's drawstrings tightened halfway around my head,
the comforting contrast of the ambience in my room,
and music playing in my ears, at a low volume.
And I sit there, lost in a void of thoughts.
Regrets from what I failed to do.
Plans and Accomplishments for the next day.
Imagining myself living my Dream Life.
Thinking about different ways I could put the work in.
________________________
I catch myself thinking long-term too much.
What happens if I do this and this tomorrow?
Will it get me closer to my accomplishment?
Should I get started on this and focus on both?
Should I quit this for now, and come back to it?
Should I go offline and live life as it is, without an online presence?
Should I showcase my life?
Nobody would care,
but what if I could help at least one person out of a thousand?
________________________
Maybe these thoughts aren't mine alone.
These are thoughts of any ambitious person.
God wakes the ones he loves,
especially in the quiet hours,
to reflect, repent, and rebuild.
I scroll through my goals and visions like tabs on a browser.
Each one asking for a different part of me.
But I'm just one person,
trying to live five futures at once.
Most people think exhaustion comes from hard work.
I don't think that's true anymore.
I can spend hours doing things that matter to me and still feel alive afterward.
But after school, I feel mentally erased.
Not tired, not even lazy, just disconnected.
To me, school is constant fragmentation:
noise,
crowds,
meaningless conversation,
forced attention,
fake urgency,
information I'll never use,
and identities people perform just to survive socially.
By the time I get home and try putting my effort into doing what actually matters for my future,
my brain doesn't want purpose,
it wants relief.
And that's the bad part.
The things that feel like recovery from this, is actually what leaves me emptier afterward.
I started realizing that my problem was never laziness or prioritization.
It was menal residue.
But at some point, I had to stop blaming the environment.
It's not about escaping distraction, it's about learning how to return to myself after being mentally scattered for hours.
To build when my mind wants relief.
To think clearly when my attention is fried.
To stay intentional in environments designed to keep people passive.
And I think the real battle of modern life is protecting your mind from becoming so scattered that you forget what you were trying to accomplish or who you were trying to become in the first place.
The Lives Around Me
Sometimes I look at a crowd of people and wonder how many entire worlds are in front of me.
Every person I pass has a life that feels, to them, just as real and complicated as mine does to me. They have a childhood I will never see,
memories they haven't thought about in years,
people they love,
people they lost,
things they regret,
things they're proud of,
fears they never speak about,
and dreams they may not tell anyone.
I wonder what happened to make them who they are?
What was the moment that changed them?
Who broke their heart for the first time?
Who's heart did they break for the first time?
Who was there when they needed someone?
What did their childhood bedroom look like?
What song feels nostalgic to them?
What is something they think about every night but never tell anyone?
And somewhere in that crowd, there is probably someone having the best day of their life.
Someone else is having the worst.
Someone just fell in love.
Someone just lost someone.
Someone is secretly terrified about tomorrow.
Someone is thinking about quitting their job.
Someone is wondering whether they chose the right life.
Someone is excited to go home.
Someone doesn't want to go home at all.
And somehow, all of these lives exist simultaneously.
I think that's what makes being alive so strange.
We walk through each other's lives constantly without ever really knowing one another.
A person can stand three feet away from you on a sidewalk, and you can know absolutely nothing about the universe that exists inside their head.
You see a face.
They see a lifetime.
And then you keep walking.
Sometimes I wonder how many people I've already crossed paths with who could have changed my life if circumstances had been slightly different.
The person sitting beside me could have been someone I became best friends with.
The stranger I passed could have become someone I loved.
Someone I will never speak to may have been going through something that I would have understood only if I had known.
There are millions of these "almost connections" happening constantly.
Lives brushing against each other for a few seconds before separating forever.
And the strange part is that I'm doing the exact same thing to everyone else.
To somebody, I'm the stranger in the crowd.
I'm the person they briefly noticed and then forgot.
They don't know what I've lived through either.
They don't know what I've lost, what I want, what keeps me awake, what I'm trying to become, or how many versions of myself I've already had to leave behind.
We're all main characters in our own lives, but background characters in almost everyone else's.
And somehow, I find that comforting.
Because it reminds me that my life isn't as small as it sometimes feels,
but it also isn't as important as my ego makes it feel.
There is something humbling about realizing that everyone around you is carrying an entire existence you cannot see.
Everyone is carrying something.
Everyone came from somewhere.
Everyone is becoming someone.
And one day, all of us will become someone that another person remembers.
Maybe that's why I want to pay more attention.
Not just to people, but to existence itself.
The fact that we're all here at the same time, for such a brief moment, experiencing completely different lives on the same planet.
Billions of people.
Billions of histories.
Billions of little universes.
And somehow, I'm living mine.
For however long I get, this is my one perspective.
My one consciousness.
My one chance to experience what it feels like to be me.
Maybe life isn't only about figuring out where you're going.
Maybe sometimes it's about looking around and realizing how extraordinary it is that you're here at all.