Pamela Kahar: In between Goals

I get sentimental whenever the calendar shows that my birthday is just around the corner. This year was not any different. Two weeks before my birthday, I started getting nervous. This might be silly. But, to be honest I truly felt that. I started to be (over) thinking whether I have achieved the things that should be crossed of from my bucket list before I turned 22. Like: writing novel, starting my own agency, creating a website that can empower women out there and so on. Call me ambitious or whatever it is. But, that’s who I am.

I become like this, not because of I heard the success story of 22 years old #girlboss who own the It multi label store, etc. I am inspired. But, truth to be said, I barely compare myself with others. I do believe that the fair, real & relevant competition is with ourselves. The benchmark is neither your friends nor your idol. The benchmark is yourself.

I wonder since when I became like this. Well, I was raised by parents who would ask why I couldn’t rank 1^st whenever I got the 2^nd place. I was raised that way, when good enough is not enough. And I am not blaming them for that. I thank them for raising me that way. If it weren’t for them, I wouldn’t have wanted to thrive like this. And maybe because I already got the answer of whom I really want to be and what I want to do in my life. As I realized, the process of know the answer did not take months or one year. It took years. As we seek Him to whisper the answer, He will show us the way through several episodes of our life.

Like a coin that has two sides, bucket list also has its own head or tail. Bucket list reminds us that we have to keep thriving so we won’t settle for less. On the other hand, bucket list sometimes makes us being too hard on ourselves, which often happened to me. My sentimental bar reached its peak few days before my birthday. In life I always have high expectation for myself. I expect myself to be this, to be able to do that. I read again my bucket list, I knew that there are a lot of things which boxes have not been checked. But, at that time it just felt so wrong.

What I often forget is that in between goals we have to stop for a while and be grateful for everything. For every progress, though it’s still lack behind what we expected. For every job that we have right now. For everything that God has given in our life. We set the timeline, do everything whole-heartedly, give the best out of ourselves, but sometimes thing doesn’t work that way. God works in His perfect timing and if what we desire is in line with Him.

There’s a thin line between the desire to thrive for more and the ungrateful feelings. We focus more to thrive for more that we might forget how to be grateful. That’s the thin line that all of us have to find out its boundaries.