Change — 26 February 2016

Kendrix Kek
3 min readSep 3, 2020

So, there is this tree right outside my house. I’ve never paid much attention to it — till just now, when I was outside admiring the night sky, and somehow, it got me thinking for a bit:

I have had a full life — 21 years of great ups and downs. And in those 21 years that made my life, I have constantly pushed myself to be better than I was the year before. I kept pushing and pushing and pushing, and as such I lost sight of what’s important: Living. I kept pushing myself towards success, and to be a better version of myself the year before, that somehow, in the midst of that pursuit, I forgot to live.

I forgot to take a step back and take a breath, or to slow down and enjoy the journey, or to give myself room for failure and the chance to get back up again.

I forgot to live.

It’s incredibly baffling what my obsession for success and my fear of failure have driven me. I forgot the thing that matters the most; the simplest thing of my existence.

I forgot to live.

See, in a way, I am a tree that keeps on growing. As I grow taller, I become bigger. I have more branches growing out of me. With more branches come more leaves. The higher I grow, the more leaves I have… and the harder it is for me to hold the leaves with my branches.

And I am starting to feel the weight of it — the weight of my leaves.

Because to me: dropping the leaves is not an option at all. Heck, it has never even crossed my mind. I need to grow; however hard it may be. I need to carry these leaves and grow taller, as high as I can possibly carry them. And in the process,

I forgot to live.

I had a chat with my professor just now. She asked me these:

Why are you so afraid of failing? Why are you so worried about all these things?

I couldn’t answer her. I couldn’t answer her because I truly did not have any answer myself. I mean, how could I even answer those. All my life, I have been so focused on growing ‘taller’ that those questions never even crossed my mind. I couldn’t answer her at all.

Maybe it’s time for a change.

Maybe it’s not so bad to slow down, take it down a notch.

Maybe it’s okay to say, “I failed, but it’s okay.”

Maybe, and just maybe, dropping one or two leaves won’t be the end of the world.

“If you’re not failing, you’re not giving yourself the opportunity to improve, to learn and to be better than who you were before.”

Maybe she is right. After all, she went to Oxford.

Maybe I should take it easy, and let myself learn from my mistakes, my failures. And after all that, maybe, just maybe,

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — I’ll remember to live again.

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