1. art and entertainment
2. comics and animation
3. comics

The words you find here are words that have been said to me, either by people close to
my heart, people who’ve found a new home in my heart or by my heart itself. Thus, this
book is written from the heart with the mission that these same words land in yours
too. Real change, real inspiration or anything you wish to be real is dictated through the
heart and that is the destination I hope to reach.
I want to say thank you for those who have allowed me in their hearts and shared
stories that are deeper than the ocean’s floor. You have allowed me to write this book,
but more importantly, you have allowed me to become someone I couldn’t have been
before I met you. I thank you and this book is a dedication to everyone who has shaped
me to become who I am today. It is imperative for me to acknowledge those that I met
and will meet and say thank you. The tiniest moment we might have shared together
has contributed to the discovery of who I am.
For I discover myself in discovering you. Love myself in loving you and are at peace with myself when I am at peace with you.
What I am intrinsically is what you are.
Who I am involves who you are.
Someone once told me that you have to be somebody before you can share yourself.
Here is a piece of me. From me to you. i
Preface
All advice is purely the byproduct of each individual. This book is a compilation of all the
experiences, little tidbits of wisdom, harsh lessons, heartbreaking realizations and
conversations I’ve had with family, friends and strangers. If you're looking for a book that
is heavily researched or scientifically based, this is not it. What this is, is a raw outlook at
the inner struggles and turmoil of a student while in school. This is more of a manifesto
because I am sharing and declaring an idea — a powerful one.
The sole purpose of the idea you will find in this book is an idea that does not to point to
you the answers, but an idea that points you to a reality that you must face yourself. I am
not here to teach because I am not a guru and I don't pretend to be one. What I do wish to
accomplish is for you to have a conversation with yourself to discover who you are. You
are more than you think you are and the entirety of this book is to reveal to you just that.
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The ideas, stories and lessons within this book saved my life. It taught me something that
school does not teach nor is it found in textbooks. Rumi once said that you can learn as
much as you can by reading, but you can only understand through love. Love is felt
through the heart. If anything we experience is not felt through the heart, through love, we
may never really feel it or learn it. We may all have hearts, but most of us have hardened
ourselves to feel anything. I didn't know how to love nor did I know how to love myself. I think that's something that no one can teach you. Only life can teach you about life itself.
And isn't life all about love?
Some may be scared to love for the return may be unrequited love. But to love is to be
brave. To hide our love only hardens our hearts and our bodies become hollowed shells.
We are humans and we are meant to love. To love is to be brave for there may not be love
in return, but we love not for what we get in return, we love because it is the exhale to the
inhales of life. Your love should be bold and brave. Love is nothing less but brave and
nothing short of unordinary. There's nothing ordinary about our lives — so be brave with
how you choose to love. This is not a book about love.
However, the essence of being a human starts with knowing how to love. In order to live,
you must learn to love and the only way to learn how to love is to understand that you are
more than you think you are.
“You are more to me than any of them has any idea;
you are the atmosphere of beauty through which I see
life; you are the incarnation of all lovely things”
– Oscar Wilde
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This is not just another book.
If it was, I wouldn’t have written it. The message behind this book is the sole reason why I
am who I am today. It has liberated me from others and more importantly from my own
monsters. If this was just another book, It would have been transcribed through the brain,
but the words you see here come from the heart. So for me, this is not just another book
and I hope it’s not for you as well. I am still a kid, and I have much more to learn from life
and writing this book has been my own accomplishment and a sign that I do matter. I
want to be special – not special to the world, but special to a few.
I have made it my mission to spread this message to whomever I come across with. So
this book is not just another book. It’s taking a stance and representing an idea. The idea
that we are more than we think we are. Once we epitomize this idea, we can become what
we dreamed of ever being.
Leaders. Change-makers.
Artists.
Teachers.
Writers.
More importantly, we can be human.
Everything we do in this life is only a function of who we are. That function can change,
but who we are is a choice we make every single waking moment. The things we do while
we are alive is the stamp we leave on this earth and its people. We are finite as time is a
piece of us that is stripped away by every moment. Each second, minute or hour that go
by, are pieces of us that are lost somewhere in space, forever. What isn't lost, are those
small moments we spend giving ourselves to others with love, grace, kindness and
compassion. Love adds to what time takes. Whatever you choose to do while you are alive – make sure you love it.
Make sure you love.
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We are all meant to fly and only we can clip our own wings. For years, I thought other
people were the reason for why I wasn't flying – but I realized, I was the one who held the
scissors to my own wings. And the moment you clip your wings off, the longer they take to
grow back. There are many things with which I wished I was told when I first started
university or even better, in the late stages of high school.
Given that I didn’t, I took it upon myself to write the book I wish I had in the palm of my
hands when I was about to make some of the biggest decisions of my life. This book will
serve of no benefit to you, if you do not start a conversation with yourself – if you do not
ponder and self reflect. All preachings, arguments, lectures and advices are all worthless
without self-reflection. We are not computers. We cannot be given input and expect
output.
Who we are is not simply described by ticks in boxes. We are not textbook math problems that stay the same nor are we self-help books. We are buckets of muddy water. We are chaotic ocean waves. We are endless mountains with tips that touch the sky. We are rays of sunshine and unrelenting rainstorms. We are made with the same fabric of existence the universe is made of.
If you take anything from this book I hope it’s this: never accept anyone’s claim at
defining you and do not live a life that is undefined.
Seek the answers you wish to seek and grab hold onto the dreams you want to live out
but no matter what, don’t accept anyone’s definition of you except your own. We cannot
be defined. This book will show you how to redefine yourself and recreate yourself so you
may recreate a new future – one that is lived out on your own terms. We are millions of
ellipsis stitched together, and the story that it tells is up to us – not anyone else. This is
your life and it's ending one minute at a time.
I hope this book does for you what it did for me. Never apologize for burning too brightly or collapsing into yourself every night. That is how galaxies are made. 6
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I S N O T
A B O U T
F I N D I N G
Y O U R S E L F
I am a student and this book is written because of the harsh reality that I have no clue who
I am. I went to school for almost two decades now and I am starting to question what it
was all for. This mystery that I hold deep within is not uncommon. Most of the people I
know, from friends to strangers I talk to everyday, say they have no clue what they’re
doing. Thus, begs the question: how can one keep going on a path, if the traveller himself
doesn’t know where he’s going? How can the traveller keep going if he doesn’t even know
where he wants to go?
This is where I am – not necessarily a crossroad, but on a road where I’ve spent most of
my life walking on and now I don’t even know where I want to go.
The enigma I remain to myself is shared by millions of other students. Social media has
made it easier to see this because, I know the language our generation speaks – because I
speak it too. We speak in codes and we hide behind our masks. We do this because we
don’t know who we are or where we want to go and those same existential questions rob
us from our sleep. This is why we face depression – but more importantly, this is why we
stay in depression. The lack of having an identity has cause us to face numerous
sufferings that have deteriorated the youthfulness of our youth.
We don’t play outside anymore. We are not curious as we once were. We are not has
playful or loving to anyone and everyone as we once were. We have been modernized to
be blank, or robots or worse, someone else. It’s normal for kids when they grow up to
copy those they like and those they admire. But spending much of your time being
someone else, you leave no time for your own soul to be discovered. But no one tells you
that, you have to find out on your own.
I don’t speak as though I have crossed the finish line or this is an aftermath for me. I still
suffer and I still have numerous uncertainties that loom over me. However, I know that I am
more than powerful to create any life I choose to. The biggest lesson I learned has been
to come to the point in my life where I said to myself that who I am is more than enough.
This is the realization you must accept for yourself as well. That you are going to love
yourself no matter what and that you are going to appreciate every victory and every
shortcomings you will experience because they don’t define you. Only you define yourself.
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That’s not what they teach in school, and this is where almost all of us kids fall into. We
make what happens to us permanent.
Life is not about finding ourselves, it’s about creating who we want to be.
We cannot possibly come to the point of making that choice until we understand the
fundamental idea that already, who we are is more than enough. This realization is the
opening chapter to redefining how our story is going to finish. We must start off with that.
There is no use in trying to be someone you’re not because you will end up only hurting
yourself or worse, you will end up living the life that is in complete disconnection with what
your heart truly wants.
By trying to be someone else, you will leave yourself wandering to which ideal best suits
you and you will keep searching hoping that you could find the answers. There will not be
a point in your life where you will feel whole and fulfilled because you’re someone else.
And by being someone else besides yourself, you can never truly be happy because
nothing is really you. There is no real identity. You will fall over and over again because you
are trying to find yourself by being someone else, or doing something else or going
somewhere that you thought you might find the person you were looking for.
Who you are is not a destination you can reach. It is not a resting place, nor is it a finish
line. There is no journey to finding yourself, because finding eludes to losing, and you can
never lose yourself. You can be disconnected from yourself, but never can you lose
yourself, because who you are has always been there. The issue was identifying yourself
with other things that wasn’t in alignment with who you truly are. That’s what started the
disconnection and that’s what started this chase.
The chase is as thought we are running after a mirage. The one who chases a mirage,
never gets there. He keeps running. The person you think you are, or hope to find or wish
to be, is only an illusion. So if it’s that you seek, no matter how close you get to the
answer, the mirage can never get touched.
I’ve learned through my own chase, that the chase is only a means to an end – but when
the means is confused with the end, you begin to be blind and forget what life is all about.
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Life is not about finding yourself. The meaning of life is something that we all decide for
ourselves.
I am a student with almost two decades of schooling under my belt. I have memorized
thousands of facts and figures, all whom are no longer tenants in my brain. I have
gathered certificates and diplomas and soon, I’ll be a university graduate. Although, for
many, this certificate seems like an accomplishment, for me it was the complete opposite.
I don’t know who I am and being thrown into the real world very soon is a scary feeling
that I can’t find words to describe.
I worry that I graduate and end up unemployed, return home and disappoint my family. I
also worry that, I will get a job, pay off my debts but never really enjoy my life. These two
paths are not ones that I wish to embark on. I realized this in my third year of school, and
the fact that I am an enigma to myself has sparked the pursuit to carve a new path. One of
my own choosing. And this is why I wrote this book, to show you how I redefined myself
to be more than just what others thought of me. To be more than a student.
I realized school couldn't teach me what it didn't know how to teach and so I took it upon
myself to create my own compass that pointed me to the person I wanted to become. This
book is my compass – and it’s purpose is to help you build your own compass to do the
same.
Often times, I heard the same dilemma that I faced – we didn’t necessarily want to go to
school, but we had too because that’s how the world works now. Over the past four years,
I’ve had numerous conversation with newly undergrads or soon to be graduates and all
seemed to share the same confusion about themselves and their future. There have been
many nights that have been filled with tears and heavy silence from my own friends, roommates and even strangers because we didn’t know who we were or what we were even
doing.
It seemed like we were living out a plan somebody else laid out for us.
And so, this book is a series of provocations stitched together with the pain of all the
students I have met – including my own. 10
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MESSAGE FROM THE AUTHOR: What you see before you is a culmination of hours of hard work, countless moments of overcoming my own
monsters and the gathering of strength, courage, vulnerability and love to make something like this and
present it to the world. There are so many opportunities in our world and so many things worth fixing, I can’t
imagine wasting this moment. I have made it my mission to not only inspire, but to ignite a conversation with
the ones like me. With the students who sit in classrooms daydreaming about making a dent in the world. We
are the leaders of tomorrow, but I am not patient enough to wait until then. This is my own way to say: it’s my
turn. I hope you see you are more capable than you think. Writing this book has made me aware of that, and I
wish to ignite the same feelings within you.
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COPYRIGHT INFO: The copyright of this work belongs to the author, Kader Godad, who is solely responsible for the
content. You are given the unlimited right to print this free chapter and to distribute it electronically
(via email, your website, or any other means). You can print out pages and put them in your favorite
coffee shop’s windows or your doctor’s waiting room. You can transcribe the author’s words onto the
sidewalk, or you can hand out copies to everyone you meet. You may not alter this manifesto in any
way, though, and you may not charge for it.
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