On questioning our self-worth

Who am I, thinking that I’m worthy enough for doing “that”?

Unless you’re a super self-righteous person, I bet it’s a familiar question for most of us. How worth am I? What am I capable of? Maybe it’s a subtle question which we don’t realize when it’s arise. But more often that ever, it’s a powerful question that often withdraw us from a life-changing opportunity.

That’s what I’m feeling when an opportunity from Mozilla come to me. It’s a position in the Participation team that will require me to communicate with lots of Mozilla community member all around the world. In that time, I’m still working as a software engineer in a startup. But I’m not sure if writing code is what I want to do for the rest of my life. So I decide to give it a try.

The moment when I said yes for that new opportunity, many people start to congratulate me. Until a friend says: “I’m very glad you made it! That’s your dream, right? Working for Mozilla?”

I stopped. Dreaming about working for Mozilla? Hmm.. Let alone, dreaming to work there. I never even think about working there before. I mean, back to the initial question above. Who am I, thinking that I’m worthy enough to work for Mozilla? I’m just a fresh-grad from a small village in a what so called third world country. Besides, I’m an introvert and this new position will challenge me to break my barrier and communicate with many people from around the world.

But now I realized that it’s not about our self-worth. It’s about how can we help other people. Just like what our Prophet Muhammad says in his hadith: “The best of people are those that bring most benefit to the rest of mankind.” (Daraqutni, Hasan)

If I can quote a medium post that I read lately,

Questioning your own self is a painful process. Your identity is something that will always be constructed during the course of your life. And you have to be flexible enough to let some identities go and welcome the new, unexpected one. Raisa Nabila

So the question now is not how worth am I? But how am I can be beneficial for other people? How can I help the others find solution of their struggles? How can I help them to learn new things? How can I help them to make progress?

I’m very grateful that God always provide me with chances to work on the fields that I like. I’ve been working in the startup environment. And I can say that I looooove the time that I work there. And I stop not because I hate coding, nor that I hate the people in my previous company. In fact, I looooooove them all. The work that I’m doing, the people there. But I quit purely because I want to learn new things. Now that I’m in Mozilla, I can also gladly says that I love it here. I love how I work with many inspirational people. Not to mention that they’re all not only helpful but also encouraging.

Some may says that ofcourse, I love being a Mozillian that I can travel the world for free. Well, hell yeah it must be my fault because that’s the only thing you can see from my social media. After all, we use social media to share our happiness but not our struggles, right. (;

NB:

This post was inspired by a Facebook post posted by my talented friend - Flaki. I’m so agree with Flaki, that hard work always pays off. And just never ever let anybody tell you what you can do or what you are capable of. High-five, Flaki!