lessons learned in 2024.

this is something new; I never wrote down lessons I learned in a specific year. but I believe this year has shed so much of its wisdom into my heart and I would deeply want to recount them and remember how harsh they were to learn.

all in all, 2024 was a year of choosing love. it made me realise how hard of a choice it is, and never what it seemed. one, when picturing love, sees it as a blossoming heavenly state of existence. however, my soul and spirit have been through hell to see what love really is. in theory, it is lavishly enthralling to write poetry about. but experiencing it is was quite an unpoetic state of being. that’s that.

and so, here are some of the major themes and lessons I’ve learned in 2024.

weakness and smallness

it’s the first time to feel severely weakened by turbulent emotions. I’ve always considered my sensitivity and emotionality as a virtue instead of a weakness or source of shame. those qualities are still there for a reason, but they worked against me in trying to recover from what I had been through. 

first of all, it was the weakness of being ill and not being able to trust my body from the debilitating episodes of IBS and slowed digestion. next came severe depression and spiritual weakness. the inability to dream on and find the passion for living came as a grievous disturbance, a state I haven’t experienced in years. of course, my self-identity was shaken to the core, for what am I but a daylight dreamer?

unfortunately, with weakness comes shame. one cannot believe that you could be so weak especially since God is ever so merciful and loving. when one suffers from such weakness, it’s ever so much more formidable to see God, especially with so many failed trials to stay closer. I feel so small now; humble and ordinary, with nothing new to offer for this world. this shift has changed my relationship with God since I’ve always been strong and in service, always dutiful and responsible, or at least trying to be. and it was as if I needed a different set of eyes to see the world with.

it is the first time that I’m forced to accept my weakness and not have a way to come around it. I’ve almost always had a way to distract myself, but there aren’t many open doors for now. it’s only time and acknowledgment of the little steps forward. on the bright side, I am learning the path of patience.

needing to change

something I have learned this year and come to realise is that I need to change and that personal evolution is necessary. ever since I was seventeen, I worked on developing the person I am now; who is a dreamer, and visionary with an unquenchable desire to be special, seen, validated and loved by everyone else. alongside the positive qualities of that persona, it no longer fits this era of my life and I desire to change, deeply. however, I still am not sure of how I need to change and cannot yet figure out who I am might turn out to be. the process of crafting visions is a God-sent gift, not something you can control and force into being. I have glimpses of my future self, and mostly, I feel I need to shed down my desire to be unique and special. 

I believe this era of me desires to become more humble and ordinary— a sort of harmonious, grateful peacemaker. a soul who embraces the smallness of this humanness and truly loves the simple happenings of day-to-day life, letting go of this shade of melancholic longing for something different in this lifetime. perhaps it is a part of the vision I have always had, and my current self is but a passageway towards it. I have always dreamed of serving others and be of a humble, people-centred nature yet my circumstances gave way to a more individualised path. I hope I can still retain my creativity, but channel it towards serving other people and being as down to earth as possible, expressing what other souls find it hard to express and using it forever in their favour.

it is quite a revelation, I know— knowing that who you are today is not serving your future self. I pray that God eases the transformation.

acceptance

something I have learned this year is the dire need to accept reality for what it is. that still takes a great deal of willpower, for I am forever used to crafting a pocket of reality and shaping it whichever way I want, never minding whatever is happening around me. that had helped me survive for a long time, ignoring the flaws and focusing on the betterment of circumstances, sugarcoating too much of it that it had eventually become toxic. 

my reality, despite having an abundance of blessings, is not as exciting as it was. my days are ordinary, mostly spent at home, and I am not striving for uniqueness and excellence each day. there is a bare minimum I keep up to but beyond that, it is quite mundane.

I believe this year is teaching me to accept what I have chosen. I have chosen to heal, to embrace a ‘normal’, recovered life. I have chosen to have a home, commit to a beautiful partnership and leave everything behind. my past self thought I’d go at it again, excelling and forcing reality to be overly sweet. but, a part of healing is the boredom of calm and the monotony of peace. even the habit of being grateful is not as easy as it was when there was a stark contrast that helped in identifying the blessings amidst a painful, constrained background.

2024 has pushed me to accept what is and make peace with my choices. accepting the normal days that do not involve ‘changing lives’ and being the ‘hero’. days where I am not appreciated to the extreme. moments when I am too invisible, instead of being the centre of everyone’s attention. 

this acceptance will channel me towards harmonious living and change, I can see it.

thank you, 2024. I am grateful for your gifts, transitioning me into adulthood. I hope I have a good ride, on the other side.