Turns Out, Life Was the Lesson

For a very long time, I thought life would make sense if I just followed the plan. Study well. Do what’s expected. Don’t mess it up. Easy.

I genuinely believed that if I did well academically, everything else would somehow fall into place. Like life had a checklist and marks were the entry ticket.

Spoiler: it didn’t work like that.

Somewhere after finishing my A/levels and stepping into university, life quietly got bigger. Not in a dramatic way. Just through people, conversations, and situations I wasn’t prepared for. And that’s when I realised something slightly uncomfortable but very freeing: academics teach you things, but life teaches you yourself .

The funny part is, life doesn’t explain itself. There’s no instruction manual. You don’t get to revise. You just live it and hope you’re paying attention.

One thing I learned very quickly is how much I underestimated myself. There were so many things I thought I couldn’t do, not because I tried and failed, but because I never tried at all. The moment I started saying, “Okay, let me just try,” I shocked myself a little. Turns out, capability shows up after you show up.

And no, it wasn’t some big dramatic moment. Sometimes it was as simple as saying yes to something random.

Like one Saturday night when I was studying in the library and a junior mentioned a car exhibition. I’m not even a car person. I had no deep interest. But it was a Saturday night, and I knew I’d otherwise just go home and scroll aimlessly.

So, I asked my parents. My mother reacted exactly how you’d expect. “You’re going out with a guy, after 7.30PM?”. My father just said, “Be careful and come back early.” So, I went.

Nothing life-changing happened. And yet, everything changed. Not because of the exhibition, but because I chose experience over overthinking. That night taught me how often we stop ourselves before anyone else does. We imagine limits. We assume outcomes. I learnt something new, and it was fun. We decide things won’t work before they even begin.

Somewhere along the way, I also changed how I talk to myself. Instead of asking, “What if I fail?” I started asking, “What will I learn?” That one question took a lot of pressure off. Trying stopped being about winning. It became about learning. And honestly, that felt lighter.

Even when things didn’t go well, I realised I wasn’t the same person I was before. I tried. I had learned something. I had grown a little. And that mattered.

Life still has ups and downs, obviously. But instead of taking everything personally or thinking, “Why is this only happening to me?”, I try to look at it as part of the process. Messy, uncomfortable and necessary.

When I’m seventy or eighty years old, and when I look back at my life, I don’t want to remember routines. I don’t want to remember schedules and deadlines and the endless repetition of doing what was expected.

I want to remember the memories. The experiences. The lessons. The small risks I took even when I was scared. I want to remember who I became along the way.

Life doesn’t come with a syllabus. But if you’re willing to try, mess up, and keep learning anyway, it teaches you everything that actually matters.

And yeah, turns out, life was the lesson all along!