Today I have learnt that life is all about taking a chill pill and enjoying the little pleasures and foolishness in happy moments. Yesterday I had a big quarrel with Farouk. This is somebody who knows me very well, maybe even better than anybody else close to me (and this is why I fear him), even though only a few people can boast of knowing me.

Spending a few hours with childhood friends today who came around and talked about girls and flirting seemed to stir up a sense of goodness and comfort. I like to see myself as a rigid person…too many high standards and being overtly meticulous. My mind shaped me to be too hard on myself, harder on the world, and highly insensitive about how those close to me feel about me during my tense moments, most especially when I’m in distress.

But today, I had a good reason to laugh hard; a few minutes to fool myself, a reason to be more tolerant than ever, and most importantly a reason to see that perfection can never be attained by humans no matter how hard we try.

So, it has made me reflect on the last 23 years of my life, and how I have gotten myself so deep into a long duration of rigidity, even so that I do not know who I really am, or who I am really meant to be. The realization of this alone induces remorse, and self-guilt about what I have done to myself; how I have made only negative experiences shape who I have become today.

In a way, that has made me take life too seriously, even though it has made me positively instill moral values, because the baseline of my mindset is to make the world a better place, by ensuring that only the right thing is done…other things are unnecessary. A good example of this is about having a good laugh. We can all laugh, but must it be loud? I perceive that as a lack of etiquette and crowd manner, even though some people think there’s a lot of fun in that.

My brother also has the same problem with me – everyday. He thinks I’m worse than Tolu, my most evil cousin. I always complain about everything he does. He sings too loud, he plays too much, he watches TV too much, he doesn’t dress good enough to me, his food is a little too salty, his food always gets burnt…Well, I am always right, because he really does all these things, and I make him understand that the reason why I would never be in that position is because I pay attention to every detail and everything around me is always under control because I want it to be so (I don’t think I like surprises). He thinks I take things too seriously, and I know that he is right, but isn’t that a good thing?

But in all of this, seeing me happy today proves that I am not smarter than myself, and life is too beautiful to be rigid. I am not a robot – wasn’t created to be one, so I have to understand that not all days should be taken seriously.

Life is soft, life is hard. Life is beautiful, life is ugly. Life is smooth, life is rough…the only difference is the times and seasons for each unique experience we live. But we should live our lives and experiences to the fullest.

The most beautiful stories are the unpredictable ones. And there is no iota of rigidity in that.

I hope someone learns from this.