About Christianity

i just finished my exams. like i said, i always have the habit of cramping everything in the last minute. the result of it is that i spent the last 3 months studying like crazy. ok so the exams ended. i finally can enjoy life. in fact i am enjoying it. although i still have to work in the day, i felt relieved that i do not need to take out my notes and memorize the words written on it when i went back to my room after a long day at work. yes, i am quite happy with the way i am.

many people have different plans after exams. playing games, clubbing, shopping, learn something new, go out, work etc. many things. everybody does different things. but whatever the case, we can say that almost all of us enjoy ourselves. i am referring to people like me, a normal human living in a normal and blessed condition. yes i admit i am blessed. back to what i was saying, we all have different defintions of enjoying life.

i got a friend, who recently disappeared on the cyberworld and appeared less often. reason? life offline is more constructive than life online. as we all finish our exams, we have the next thing to ask. we are still young, what should we do so that we will not waste our life away? of course to do something constructive. but what is a constructive life? shopping? playing? learning? no i am not criticizing what people do. if you think by shopping you can be happy, go ahead. i play games too. but then, enjoying life and a constuctive life is different, and a constructive life is different from a purposeful life.

you may play games, but it may not constructive. you may take up a new course to learn something, but that may not be purposeful. we only live life once. when we die, what do you hope to achieve? that i achived a level 100 in a mmorpg game? or i got 20 degrees in university? of course, i am not condemning that. who knows? maybe your level 100 is your purpose in life. everyone has a different purpose that she or he understands and set out to do. who am i to judge? but i am saying, on your deathbed, or years later when you look back, do you want to regret spending your youth on something meaningless?

for me, i play too. and i know games are pointless. i don't play a lot now. i know my purpose. and my purpose is writing stories ( i am posting it up starting on 15 june 2008 though, on my website ). is it strange? maybe to you it is. to me it is not. you might think it is pointless to write a story just like how i think playing a game has no purpose at all. of course, the purpose is given to us by God, and He will know what to do with it, including if your life mission is to do something really pointless in a human's point of view.

now that i have free time, i am able to think in a relaxed way. of course i still play game. you don't expect a human to only work and not play. what i am trying to say is, are you spending your time in such a way and for a purpose that you will smile and be proud of years later, or will you waste your life on enjoyable things but will achieve nothing in the end?

i just learnt a lesson on the last day of my exams. not exactly learn, maybe reminded and having the idea knocked into my head.

so this is what happened. i had my exams, and just finished it. i had 4 modules, and so had to take 4 papers. the last paper was supposed to be the easiest paper, and the paper i had the most confident in. the thing is, i did not aim to score, i only aimed to pass. call me unambitious, whatever. i do not have the habit of studying way before the main exams and always had to cramp everything in at the last minute. and naturally what people would do is to - ? spot topics. of course.

so i spotted topics. my friends too. we were part time students. we work in the day and study in the night. we had no time like the full time students to study whole day. when we had free time we want to rest, we do not want to study, which explains why we cramp everything in at the last minute. this is not an excuse. i admit i am lazy.

so we spot topics. it was risky. i remember my friend telling me not to study a certain topic because she could not do it. she told me if i were to understand it it would be very easy. but she could not understand it, and she told me not to study. that was the day before the exams. to be more specific, the time which she told me that was less than 24 hours before the exam start. and can you believe it, we were still spotting and deciding which topic to study as backup. we had prepared that in the event the topics we predicted did not come out we need to have a backup plan. but the problem is, i had heard her wrongly. i heard it as - study that topic because it is easy.

on that day of exam, i got a shock when i see the paper. the questions i predicted did not come out as many as i expected. note that i had aimed to pass, not to score. which means if i spot wrong topics there is a high chance i would fail. i spot 4 topics, it came out only 1. the other 1 was a backup topic i had prepared but i was not confident in. and you know what? the only topic i spotted correctly, i forgot how to do it!!!! that exact question appeared in the prelims, with only the numbers changed. this was a question where everything else is the same except for the numbers and the 'situation' given in the question. and this was the topic i had prepared for. and i could not do it. can you imagine how i felt?

i turned on to the last page to look at the question. there it was, the easiest question of the paper. and you know what? a second shock. this was the topic my friend told me not to study because it was hard. i had heard wrongly and studied it. and for the topic i spent less than a day preparing for, it was really a miracle i could do ALL the sub-questions in that topic.

before the exam, i had slacked a bit. i was really in no mood to study. i had stayed at home and studied every free time i got. why? because of last minute cramping. that happened for about 3 months. work, study, work, study. i got sick of it and did not want to study for the last paper which was my most confident paper. i knew i could not be complacent. i tried to force myself to study, telling myself to be humble. sometimes i did manage to study sometimes i don't. be humble, i tell myself. the body do not follow the mind. is that an excuse? i don't know.

and on that day, it further knocked into me the need to be humble. the question i did in prelims, the question i spot for, i had forgot how to do. the question my friend asked me not to do and which i heard wrong, i could do it. now, is there such a co-incidence? i believe it is a lesson God gave me. a lesson which i do not need to learn the hard way. i think i should be able to pass. but... be humble. i hope to pass.

moral of the story? even in the confident situations, there are things that could go wrong. unexpected help could also come. never be complacent. be humble always. i used to pray that God would help me pass my exams. but from 3 years ago, i had started praying that God will give me the results He deemed fit, but i added that i hope to pass, if it is not against His will. but in actual fact, what i think i should do is to study hard and get everything in, and then let Him decide to let me pass or not, instead of being on the verge of failing and then letting Him decide. haix, but i am lazy. will i change? i don't know. if you read all the way to here and still do not understand what i am talking about, then remember this one thing - be humble at all times. you won't want to regret.