In One Year You’ll Be Glad You Started Today
A couple nights ago I ran into an old colleague (OC) of mine that I haven’t seen or talked to in almost seven years (seven YEARS!!!) and it gave me cause to stop for a minute and think back to the Zahra that was…
Seven years ago, and more particularly, at the time that I met OC I was a very, very different person. In fact, it was because of my interactions with OC and the rest of my colleagues that I am, in large part, the person I am today.
Seven years ago I was 19, just completing my first full year as a college student, and still aiming to be a lawyer. Damn.
I was also extremely immature, pretty socially awkward, not comfortable with who I was/not really sure who I was (I was super naive about everything and pretty innocent and yet I had visible body piercings…hmm), and in a totally different place mentally and spiritually.
I didn’t realize all of this at the time and I didn’t realize how I must have appeared to those around me…until the summer I met OC and company. What followed was probably one of the most emotionally difficult experiences of my life that ultimately left me feeling like a burnt down house. My constructions of myself, the rooms in my head that I had used as defense mechanisms, the rooms that held the creativity and drive, the room that held my heart - the good, the bad…all of it was destroyed, leaving me with a broken spirit and the overwhelming task of rebuilding who I was as a person.
But, as I picked myself up, I realized that my burnt down house could either be a painful burden that I would carry with me or it could be my chance to liberate myself, to let go of the past and really start over - to create my ideal person and go after it, regardless of what the old Zahra was or was not, what she thought was capable of, what she knew to be “possible.”
I went with the latter option. And for the next long stretch of years, I let go of everything I thought I was, I stopped talking, stopped projecting, stopped “claiming” who I was and I just watched. I watched, I absorbed, I learned lessons, I asked questions, read books, took classes. I made tick marks: I like that quality she has, I don’t want to come off looking like that guy, I like this personality trait, I like that…I made an inventory of skills and assets and characteristics that I wanted. I started at zero, I did my homework, and I built.
And now, seven years later, I understand what it means to be glad I started that summer.
As I talked to OC the other night, I was conscious of the huge difference in the person that he used to know and the one that was standing before him.
I don’t think I’ll ever stop reflecting and analyzing and finding new ways to improve myself, but in the meantime, I am so incredibly grateful for where that experience and the intense amount of working on myself that followed from it has led me to today.
It’s refreshing to wake up every morning knowing and liking who you are, inside and out and being confident about letting others see that in you.
