The adversary is an opportunity to grow

I have a belief that each adversary is an opportunity to grow. Each time you come across some hardship, it is an opportunity to learn from this experience, learn more about yourself, and grow as a person. And if I am not wrong, this is one of the Amal principles of progress called “Khudi”. One of these adversaries is me not having a laptop for a long time and how I dealt with the situation reminds me a lot about my first two weeks at Amal Academy.

In this era of digitalization, if you do not have a PC, you are way behind than your peers. There are a lot of opportunities that you miss out on and that is what was happening to me. My old laptop got broken and I was left with no PC for a long time. During this time, there were a lot of training opportunities and freelance projects that I missed out on.

Most people will not think twice as some of these models can be very cheap, but for me, it wasn’t the case. My dad wasn’t earning and I wasn’t able to save from my monthly allowance. I kept pitying myself for some time, but I used the first two Amal principles of progress, that are “Amal” and “Khudi”. I just started working as a freelance writer, using the library PC. After a month of hard work, I was finally able to save enough to buy myself a new one. And this experience also enabled me to reflect on all the past times I thought I could change nothing but all it took was some courage and hard work.

So what the image of my laptop really reminds me of are Amal principles of progress. If I ask myself what the experience was like, I would say that my weekend sessions were the only time I didn’t feel depressed. It was around that time I started to believe in myself once again. I felt like I could do things. I started to feel like I do have the potential to turn things around.

At the start of this beautiful 3-months journey, I was having second thoughts about it. I was scared. I was scared because I thought it would only expose how incompetent I was. But what I was more afraid of was the fact that if I do not take this action for myself, I would remain in this dark pit forever. I still remember the time I received the call from my Program Manager Ma’am Zeest. I did tell her I was excited, but to be honest, it was a lie I told myself, I was nervous.

Despite all these feelings, things turned out pretty good. The first two weeks were pretty amazing. I learned to be happy. I learned that all it takes is to just start a thing, and everything will be all right. If I have to summarize everything, I would say the Amal principles of progress have had the most profound effect on my growth.

At the end of this journey, what I discovered about myself is that all I need in life is a positive attitude and believing in myself. Because even if you are stuck in a dark maze, if you take the initiative, believe in yourself, and learn from all the wrong turns you took and work hard to find the right path with grit and perseverance, you can easily find the other end of the maze.