What’s one thing you wish you had started doing earlier in life?
When a Butterfly First Saw the Sky Differently
There was a little butterfly.
Since childhood, she had believed whatever she was taught and told. She accepted those things as the truth and started living her life accordingly. She never really thought that there could be a world beyond what she had been shown.
Perhaps she believed that life was only as big as the world she could see.
Then one day, she saw another butterfly just like her, flying much higher than she had ever imagined.
For the first time, a question came to her mind:
“Is there something even higher up there that I have never seen before?”
That question changed something inside her.
She decided to fly.
She used all her strength and began flying higher. As she went higher, the sky became clearer, and she started seeing beautiful views she had never seen before.
It felt as if she had entered a completely new world.
And then she thought:
“I wish we had come here earlier.”
Why Is It So Important to Listen to Your Own Voice?
I wish we had listened to our own voice earlier.
I wish we had not treated every lesson from our childhood as the absolute truth of our lives.
I wish we had understood that having wings is not enough to reach the sky. To choose our own direction, we also need to listen to our own voice.
Maybe our lives would have been different.
And perhaps this is true for my own life too.
Many times, I did not give my own voice the importance it deserved. I gave more importance to what other people said. I looked at myself through other people’s eyes. I started believing what people thought about me as if it were the truth about who I was.
I accepted what society called right as my own definition of right.
And slowly, I pushed my own voice so far into the background that I could barely hear it anymore.
When We Start Living According to Other People’s Expectations
We often become so busy trying to meet other people’s expectations that we forget to ask ourselves what we actually want.
What do we want to become?
How do we want to live?
What truly makes us happy?
And most importantly—
Is the life we are living really the life we chose for ourselves?
How a Difficult Time Taught Me to Look Within
I began to understand these questions when I was going through one of the most difficult phases of my life.
On one side were my dreams. On another was my self-respect. And somewhere between them were my relationships, leaving me confused and emotionally exhausted.
When I needed my loved ones the most, some of them were no longer there for me.
Perhaps that was the moment when I asked myself for the first time:
“If there is really someone who is still with me right now, who is it?”
The answer came slowly.
It was me.
That realization changed many things inside me.
Choosing Yourself Is Not Selfish
That was when I started listening to my own voice.
I started giving importance to the rules I had created for myself instead of always living according to other people’s expectations. I began to understand that I did not have to make every decision just to keep other people happy.
Slowly, I started understanding myself.
There was a time when I had begun to dislike myself. But eventually, there came a time when I started enjoying my own company.
I stopped looking at myself through other people’s eyes.
I stopped constantly wondering how other people saw me.
Instead, I started asking myself:
“How do I see myself?”
And perhaps that was the most important change of all.
What Changed When I Stopped Ignoring Myself
Because when we always see ourselves through other people’s eyes, we slowly become disconnected from who we really are.
We hear our weaknesses in other people’s voices. We see our failures through their eyes. And we begin to measure our worth through their judgments.
But the moment we start listening to our own voice, we begin to understand ourselves.
Today, I have learned to stop ignoring myself.
For the first time, I have started putting myself first—not because I want to be selfish, but because I have understood that we cannot keep putting ourselves last and expect to remain happy for long.
I have started listening to my own voice.
I have started understanding my own mind.
And most importantly, I have started learning how to love myself.
Do I Wish I Had Understood All of This Earlier?
Even now, sometimes a thought comes to my mind:
“I wish I had started all of this earlier.”
I wish I had not always looked at myself through other people’s eyes.
I wish I had not hated myself so many times.
I wish I had not ignored my own wishes and my own voice for so long.
Maybe some of the difficulties in my life would have been easier to face.
But now I also understand that we do not always understand everything at the right time.
Some things only become clear after we have lived through them.
Some paths become visible only after we have walked too far in the wrong direction.
And perhaps, sometimes, we have to travel a long way before we finally find our way back to ourselves.
Maybe Our Sky Is Bigger Than We Ever Imagined
Like that little butterfly, perhaps we also need to fly a little higher one day and see that the world was never as small as we were taught to believe.
Maybe the sky was always there.
We simply took too long to look up.
So if there is one thing I would say to myself about life now, it would be this:
Listening to other people is not wrong, but losing your own voice is.
The path you want to take may not be visible to someone else.
Your dream may not make sense to everyone.
And perhaps the most beautiful sky of your life is waiting just a little higher than the place where you were taught to fly.
So listen to your own voice.
Maybe it is trying to take you towards a world you have never seen before.
And perhaps one day, when you finally reach that place, you will feel the same thing—
“I wish I had listened to my own voice earlier.”