So now what?
After so much mental processing and reflecting, this question sometimes pops: Now what? After all that, what is next? It looks like there is an increasing gap in the thoughts that stretches the brain to think. What is next? What could be the option, the living style, the idea, the next step, the next project, the drive, the passion?
Especially if you have been living a life that is not yours, that was created for you to follow what others are doing or to fit in the culture and society, this question becomes even harder to answer. But after several processing and reflecting on your thoughts and personal values, it is worth to put it there in your mental screen.
If many of the thoughts I have been thinking were actually conditioning from the society and system around me and not my own, what could be my own? Where do I want to go in the next stage of my life? What is the next chapter that I would like to create? How would I want to go about living my short temporary life? What kind of projects I would love to pursue? How would I be spending my precious free time?
What a wonderful thing to start looking at your life from a distance and reflect on it. If Allah, our creator, encourages us to reflect and process deeply the Holy Book of Quran before we blindly accept it. If that is the case, what about our life, living, time and the daily activities we do? Aren’t they also worth the processing and reflecting too before we just take them in?
It doesn’t matter how much time it takes you to answer this question. Just continue doing the processing and reflecting. It is the journey that matters here and not the outcome. Pay attention to your needs. What is your preferred context. What are your values. What do you stand for. What are your boundaries. What kind of relationship you have with yourself, time and people around you? What about your daily activities? Whether it is your job, business, hobbies, community-related work, charity-work, family-related activities, what activities that fill you up? What daily routines that transform you and force you to grow and expand? If you were not paid for the work you do today, will you continue doing it? If not, then which one?