The Future We Imagine...

Our lives revolve around an intense cycle of creating a life for ourselves. In our limited time on this spinning blue ball called Earth, we are handed down a set of rules on the do’s and do not’s of life, which we unflinchingly surrender to. We’re told to go to school, get a degree, get a job, get married and before you even know it, life would’ve flashed by you faster than you could spell out the word FAST. Yet, what about our dreams? What about those little seeds that were planted in our minds, growing over the years with a rich accumulation of dreams, waiting to burst into full bloom? Do we simply quell them and conform to societal norms or decide to take a bet and plunge into the unknown?

As children we’re asked questions like, what is your ambition? What do you want to be? Oftentimes this question stumps many of us and we rush to answer with the usual, ‘Engineer, Doctor and Pilot’, which the soi-disant adults are greatly thrilled by. More often than not, this doesn’t really transform into a career aspiration for many of us, leaving us with that recurring question, ‘what do I really want to be?’. Personally, I’ve had to condition my brain into believing that the plan might go awry, but the goal has to be a clear cut one.

Changing goals at the drop of a hat is an absolute recipe for disaster. Then again, this is simply tangential to a long list of dreams we intend on bringing to reality. So ask yourself again, ‘What does the future I imagine really hold for me?’ The short answer is you never really know, but are you going to mope about and worry about situations before they come to pass? Imagine this, you’re sitting in the lobby of a hospital, watching an old man struggling to get out of his seat and a sudden thought pops in your mind, ‘what if I end up like this someday?’ The answer to this is both an affirmative and negative. The affirmative? you will inevitably grow old. Our bodies are aging each second and there is nothing you can to do bring it back. The negative? If you were to start taking care of your health, you could buy yourself a few more years at the very least.

The thing about life is that if you spend all your waking hours staring into oblivion about what might come to pass instead of working towards something, in this case a future you imagine.

You really can’t create a future for yourself if you wallow in self-pity and languish around hoping that the odds will mysteriously work in your favour. Something to bear in mind, if you believe in god(s) remember that you can have faith in god’s plan, yet as someone once said, ‘god does not help those who don’t help themselves’. As harsh as it sounds, this is a fact that has to be internalized into our inner psyche, as blind faith is just as risky as jumping headfirst into a dark abyss.

So this future you’re probably dreading? It hasn’t happened yet, what can you do though? Make sure you’re moving towards a goal. Something that makes you think in days and not decades. The path doesn’t have to be linear, but it has to be a path that takes you somewhere. It could be something as trivial as changing your daily routine, or fixing your sleep or even holistically dedicating your time towards self-development. Most consider self-improvement a herculean task of its own, and oft times it can feel quite burdensome. Much akin to Sisyphus struggling against the weight of the boulder, you choose whether to allow this burden to crush or to simply hold it at bay.

The path to realizing your dreams and breathing life into them will inevitably be fraught with hardships. Be it people, situations or yourself, you have the power to decide whether this chooses to affect you or not. At the end of the day, your dreams need to make sense to one

person: YOU. Personally, I’ve always been a big believer in manifestation, but you can only manifest something so long as you’re willing to make a concerted effort towards achieving it. Just like the big bang brought an entire galaxy hurtling into existence, you’re endowed with the same power to bring you imagination into realty.

Dreams are a powerful catalyst for realizing your goals, so dare to dream as ambitious as you like. Pursuing a future you imagine, will be fraught with many an adversity, but is what makes life adventurous, few understand the euphoria of facing up to crippling situations, persevering through them and living to tell the tell like soldiers of yore. Life is fleeting and the more you stop to ponder and agonize what the future holds for you, time would have already taken both you and your loved ones as its victims.

Reiterating my initial question on ambition, I would rattle different roles to different people like a wheel of fortune, not really knowing that someday I would come to embrace the most abstract of career options. Now if I was asked what I really wanted out of life, it would be one simple word: Peace.

In a world that has grown so fast paced and so devoid of emotion, peace is the ultimate currency. The ability to sit both alone or with your loved ones, and being so very secure in your own energy is the ultimate blessing anyone can have for themselves in this life. To sum up everything above, the future you imagine should be one you are willing to go the extra mile to create, you might get called selfish but being selfless towards others does not mean that you should consider your self any lesser. No matter what, always strive to give yourself the love you give others, that is the ultimate power one can hope to have.

Remember, a journey of a thousand miles stars with a single step, so throw yourself out there and bring YOUR future to life!

Penned By: Aakil Riyaz