After around 2 years of hiatus, I'm finally writing a blog post again. Honestly, I feel that I'm losing my habit of writing altogether and it's a sad thing because writing out my thoughts help me to have a better understanding of myself and to make myself feel better.
What I want to talk about today is: Is it arrogant of us, human beings, to expect ourselves to know all the answers to the questions in the universe? When I was young, I had no such problems of feeling upset or disappointed about not knowing the answers to my practice questions. Of course, there was frustration involved when I couldn't get a seemingly correct answer especially for mathematics calculations but I've never disappointed in myself for not knowing the answer. In fact, my mum used to chide me for not bothering to find out the answers to my exam questions when I finished my exams.
However, as I grow older, I realize that I start to develop a great sense of upsetness and disappointment in myself when I am unsure of myself in an exam. This is especially so when I studied very hard and have had the confidence in doing well prior to taking the paper. This really goes against my own beliefs that there is no end to learning and it's okay to not know. Even so, I can't stop these negative feelings and sometimes I feel so bothered about not knowing. I don't know if this is a product of arrogance, that as I grow older I feel smarter and thus I feel that I should be all-knowing or is this merely a product of frustration transformed into upsetness. Ever since I've stepped into university, I feel the weight of the bell curve more than ever and I've often realized that this very bell-curve brings out the very worse in us. In our bid to do well, to ride the bell curve, we study hard and feel amazing about ourselves when we do well. It's easy to be overwhelmed by the sense of pride and even arrogance when you score an A and when you screw up a paper, the sense of disappointment gets even more intense as well, knowing that you are tanking the curve for others.
I know not whether my upsetness is a product of my drive to do well or is it from my arrogance. Either way, I'm becoming a worse person, a person who worries excessively about the negative details and I don't want to continue to be like that. It's so hard to become back to being who I was, to be okay with not knowing, to be okay with not being the best and to be okay with just being me. Maybe competition is what drives us forward, but I feel that it's clear that the competition that I'm under is excessive. I am enough for myself, there's no point in knowing it all because this takes away the joy in learning. We are more than our academic success and we are more than our letter grades. I hope that I will put down my pride and my arrogance so that I can open my eyes and see what truly matters.
