Life is a Journey of “an empty book”

By Hamide Abdol Aziz

“This life is an empty book, your journey is to fill it, and share it with the world. You must be willing to let go of negative thoughts and accept the challenge to complete the journey of this empty book. Fill it with all your heart.”

Waking up from a seemingly endless dream, Aziz sat on his bed with a heavy thought: the question of building the future that had been chasing him for a long time.

Drinking a glass of water, the question that came up in the dream was still lingering in his mind. He did not know how to respond to that statement because he always seemed stuck in his thoughts and wondered about his own abilities.

Hamide Abdol Aziz, a Vietnamese, is a final year Communication student specialising in Integrated Media Journalism. He is known for his creativity and friendliness.

He is a thin-shaped person, with a cold face but having a friendly attitude. Despite the unapproachable look, he has an honest heart and always looks for any opportunity to connect with others. He believes that friendships will support and benefit him in many ways.

At a teen age, he learned to balance his emotions and his actions when he went through a tough time in school life where he frequently lost in his own thoughts. He struggled to free his mind, and the only thing he could do is through writing.

Moreover, he started to write a few short stories and used his own image as the main character. He understood that negative thought was his greatest enemy, so he kept himself busy writing in order to forget that feeling.

Then, he learnt how to let things go and how to accept things. Since that moment, he saw himself as an empty book which would be filled by lessons and experiences that he might gain through various issues throughout his life. Anything or anyone that appeared in his life will be a sentence to fill in that empty paper, and every sentence meant a lot to him. Gradually, he found his own power: creativity and patience. 

At the age of 17, he changed his attention to tourism and information technology courses, and he used to neglect the writing hobby. After some years, he lost interest in the tourism courses, so he decided to find another interest. Taking his brother’s advice, he signed up for a communication course.

Undeniably, fate works beyond our sight. So, through a lot of consideration and experience over the years, he has returned to his original starting point: writing. He now finds responsibility and passion in it.

On the other hand, Aziz believes that writing should come from the heart without any evil intention or any harm to anyone or any organisation. A good journalist needs to be flexible and honest, stay away from misconception, and should not use it to propagate unfair coverage.

Aziz said: “The writing (in journalism) must be applied to bring goodness, awareness, love, hope, and peace to the community, neither hates nor dirty tricks. Journalism is the job of pure intention with warm hearts while writing is the shield to protect the truth from evil. Writing with heart then spread it with pure intention, surely we will get blessing from God.”

Perhaps, Aziz is one of the special cases among those who are predestined to the profession of writing. He has a hobby of writing but he is not a good writer. To him, poor grammars and limited academic vocabularies are his biggest challenge. He likes to express his opinion but he has no idea how to impress others. He wished to have a good mentor in the field of writing so that he can improve his writing style.

Additionally, Aziz’s writing style does not focus much on research but he likes to write about human emotions, life’s matters, and fiction-novel stories. He explained this is because there are a lot of research papers and society’s issues have been written by other authors, so he wanted to use his time to write about the soul-world in humans.

As an ambivert person, he might have an open mind to be friendly with everybody but he also wanted to just live in his own space at the same time. Thanks to this, he was quite easy to understand and sympathise with others’ emotions and actions, especially youngsters.

He wants to go deeper into the true feelings and thoughts of youngsters to discover and share with the community. In the past, the first generation learned how to survive war and famine; this is a valuable lesson for the younger generation to learn and work hard to achieve their goals. However, some young people find it difficult to cope with difficulties or challenges in this modern age because of their lack of confidence in their own abilities.

Aziz honestly shared, “I could spend all day thinking about my generation’s issues in everyday life, economics, communication, relationships, and education. I hope to be able to understand the attitudes and feelings behind the actions and thoughts of young people, then I can do something to help them, maybe through my writings in the future.”

Back to the aforementioned question at the first sentence of this article, Aziz believed that he will learn skills and tips about writing to improve his perception of journalism and writing skills as now it is the key to his future.

“From now on, journalism will not only be one of the most caring subjects but also memorable in my journey of the empty book. If my childhood is the first chapter to begin my life, then journalism will be a chapter of a milestone in my passion and future career. I will wait until my empty book will be filled with meaningful stories that I may find from journalism in the future.”

Although in the final year of his degree, Aziz confessed that it’s still quite vague about his future as well as his future career. He said that he has three possible scenarios: the first is that he will work as a freelancer, the second is that he will work in the press-advertising office, the third is that he will try his hand in all fields. The possible one may be the second scenario, perhaps!

To prepare for what’s to come, Aziz knows his own strengths and weaknesses. Although he does not have much technical knowledge, he is easily self-deprecating and often he is confident that he has the ability to be creative, and to learn fast. This will be a stepping stone for him to be more confident in his ability and experience in journalism and other life issues.

“It’s time for me to step out of my comfort zone and strike towards the challenge with a stable mind and a firm belief. If I fail, it’s a lesson. If I succeed, it’s an experience. I need to improve my research and writing skills, also the languages. Let patience guide me to victory,” he said with a determined voice. 

On the other hand, lifestyles, sciences, history, and fiction-novel books are the most interesting books that have influenced his writing. Shyly, he said that he used to write a Vietnamese-language fiction story when he was in secondary school. The story is about humanity having to leave Earth because the rise of robots and artificial intelligence lead to conflict and war between the two races. Unfortunately, the book was lost but it was the best motivation for him to continue writing.

Some of the books that he used to read and wished to share with the readers are “Stories of the Prophets” (Ibn Kathir), “1984” (George Orwell),  “Percy Jackson and the Olympians” (Rick Riordan), “Inferno” (Dan Brown), “Reason to Stay Alive” (Matt Haig), and “The Confidence Solution” (Keith Johnson). These books were the foundation for Aziz’s writing style.

Besides, he followed the news on The Star, New Straits Times, VnExpress (English version), and BBC. By updating the news from these reputable newspapers and magazines, he has learnt on how they organise, arrange, and post the news, then spread it to the community. BBC is one of the useful media since it provides numerous news and opinion pieces about specific issues. Access to the news will make readers and audience understand the current issues better.

The above newspapers, magazines, fiction and non-fiction books have benefited him which he considers worthy lessons. They taught him to be patient with every decision and let creativity lead him to success in his field of occupation. He followed freedom and believed that work efficiency and productivity will be effective when we can balance creativity with expertise.

Aziz has a strong belief that journalism is not just a tool but the greatest job. There are not many people who fight and sacrifice their life for the truth in the world as journalists do. A journalist should have pure intention and a warm heart because he or she is just not living for themselves but the unheard voice, the minorities, the pain, and the truth.

One day, this empty book’s journey will be completed by filling it with precious stories, and possibly this would be the greatest achievement for Aziz. ***

(This article is written as part of individual assignment series for Feature Writing class)

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