First 2 weeks at Amal
The whole Amal journey has been absolutely amazing. I exposed myself to different environments and really challenged my comfort zone.
I chose government college Lahore to be my campus, that is very far from my house, and I had to take orange line train to reach there. First week was spent figuring out how early I need to leave house? How much time will the train take? Which station is nearest to GC? How much will I have to walk, from respective station to reach GC? I have never been to Old Lahore, going this far all alone in a totally new place using local transport was such a nightmare, but I did it anyway. Feeling very grateful that I took this step.
First week went fine, but I was taking a longer route, it was taking me 2 hours to reach at my destination. Next week I had to change my route again to take the shortest route, that also involved a 15 minutes walk from station to GC, I managed to reach at right station in time, Thank God!
Little did I know that this little 15 minutes walk was about to be the most dreadful walk of my life. Of course I turned in a wrong street and then kept taking wrong turns until I completely lost track of my location. After 30 minutes of searching and asking people for directions, I still was not able to reach GC, and I was 20 minutes late already and still lost, so just sat there on a foot path and cried for good 10 minutes and continued walking and searching again. lol
After another 20 minutes, finally entered a street that felt little familiar. Phew! A long breath of accomplishment before I literally ran towards my destination.
I believe you learn a lot when you are by yourself. Trying and failing times and times again till you succeed. There is no way out, and no room for giving up. The major lesson that I learned in Amal is Resilience. No matter in which situation you are, everything will workout if you refuse to give up.
Amal has made me realize that:
Things are only hard till you try them
First steps are always harder, but It gets easy afterwards.
Just take the first step and you will figure out the rest
This is the mindset shift that Amal has brought in me. The first two weeks in Amal were also focused on activities with peers that involved figuring out things by ourselves. These activities put more emphasis on this concept of just starting and learning in the process. This mindset shift is already helping me in my practical life.
