How I remind myself to always be grateful?


One day, as I was walking to my morning class (I have 830 am class every day, not complaining), I just remembered my prayer, that I used to recite every day before going to bed and every time after the 5 times daily prayer. This is a line from my prayer that I recited every day since I was a kid. My parents thought me this and eventually, as I grow older, it has been my routine.
“…Ya Allah, berikanlah kami sekeluarga peluang untuk belajar ke luar negara…” translated to “…Ya Allah, grant my family the chance to study abroad…” It has been my parents’ dream to send their kids studying abroad, hence they make us include this in our prayer. I made it to Montreal, Canada and Atika is in Adelaide, Australia. Alhamdulillah, Allah grants the wishes, and hopefully Aiman and Adlina will be granted this wish too, amin.

This thing has been in my mind for a week, and today I decided to write about it. I just feel content and blessed. Since that day, I hardly complain about how hard things are this semester. This semester I have 3 lab reports due every week, one lab after another, back-to-back quizzes and exams, as much as I feel overwhelmed by school stuff, I feel blessed. Because hey, studying abroad has been one of my wishes since I was 3 and little did I know, 17 years later, my dream does come true.

A key of happiness is to always be grateful of what you have. And one way of doing that is to recall all the dreams you used to wish upon and tracked every one of them which came true. I remember when I was 12, I prayed that I got accepted to boarding school and 5 years later, I graduated from one of the best boarding schools in Malaysia. I was given a choice to study in the UK when I was 12, cause my dad worked in the UK that time, or to continue my high school journey in SSP. No one forced me, not even my parents. I chose to study in SSP and that is definitely one of the best decisions in my life.

One day, during YTN camp last summer, a wise man came and gave a talk to the YTN scholars about gifts and tests from God. He said that Allah will only grant our wishes, hence they’re gifts from Him, if and only if we can handle the tests that come with them.  To have our wishes granted is a blessing, and to be able to go through the tests that come with them is definitely a success.

Being in Electrical Engineering major is hard. This is the life decision that I always question though, but back to Paragraph 1, I don’t complain as much now.

I am a hard worker, I don’t know how to study smart, work smart, I don’t know. I study hard, work hard, because only by studying hard, I can get better grades. I’m not super smart, I didn’t get 3.90GPA every semester, but just enough to make myself happy haha. But I guess I should add on something fun to my ‘study hard, work hard’ formula. I walk.

Every day, I aim to walk 5000 steps and now that the weather in Montreal is still nice and not ice-y, it’s always possible. I will take the longest route to get home and take more stairs and it’s been therapeutic.  Today, while completing my assignments, I did time calculation in my head. ‘Will I be able to finish the report if I go for a walk at 530pm?’ After having a long thought about it, I decided to just go. Note that, I still haven’t completed the report while I’m blogging this but I just feel the need of telling my future self about this feeling. Anyway, me and Nawwar (my roomie) we went for a walk at Jeanne-Mance park and Nawwar has a new toy, a film camera, so we had a short photography session and as we walked home, we stopped by Chatime and had bubble tea and I went home, feeling happy.

The older people always remind me to not be so happy, because I will eventually cry after that but today, I just feel content. I don’t feel worried. I feel like my life has been taken care by the Almighty and I have no reason to feel worried about anything.

As much as I feel stressed about my study, my grade has been fated anyway. I just have to keep studying and do my very best because Allah will do the rest.

Another thing that I’m blessed about is the humans I’m surrounded with. At times, I had experienced days when I asked someone a question but his/her response just completely ruined my day. But I’ll always keep telling myself that these ‘toxicated’ human beings shouldn’t define my happiness, shouldn’t affect my feeling and they don’t define my life.

When one person doesn’t treat me right, I should know that it’s fine because I have 10 more people that love me and care about me and always remember me in their prayers.

I don’t have enough money to travel this December because last Summer there was a confusion in the calculation of the scholarship allowance but I don’t feel as sad. Because I know this time, for this allowance, I have to save up for something more important, for a bigger event in my life. And by sacrificing now, I know I will be happy later, even happier. Because why travel alone when you can travel with your most favorite person on Earth right? ;)
To travel is a gift, it’s not something that I must do just because the rest of the society finds it cool. Money shouldn’t be a problem, and traveling is not the only solution because there’re more ways to be happy.

I take pictures, not to show the world how good my life is. But I take pictures for my memories, because if one day, I lost all my memories, at least I have the pictures that could tell me that my life was amazing.


I write, not to seek for attentions. But I write for my kids to know that I’m not a superhuman and miracles don’t happen every time. My life is full of ups and downs but a little thing can make you treasure your life more—have gratitude.


4 comments

  1. your post always make me reflect my life..thankyouu

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  2. ah sis , thanks for this post!

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    Replies
    1. You're welcome Khadijah! I enjoy reading your adventure in you new blog (wordpress) too :D

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