By Nahrizul Adib Kadri
It came suddenly. The way lightning arrives a split second before the thunder, during one of those familiar afternoon storms in KL. I was walking back to my Ibnu Sina Residential College office after a meeting at the Faculty of Engineering when the sky grumbled, the wind shifted, and a thought appeared as quickly as the bolt that cracked somewhere behind Bukit Cinta:
What if you are already the person you have been trying so hard to become?
It was such a simple question, yet it stopped me for a moment. You see, we spent so much of our lives chasing improvement, trying to fix something inside ourselves, trying to grow in ways that look impressive. We read, we plan, we measure. We tell ourselves we are not quite there yet. That we need more discipline, more confidence, more something.
But what if growth is less about adding, and more about uncovering?
Michelangelo once said, “I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.” He basically is saying that he did not carve David from marble. He removed the excess to reveal the figure that already lived inside the stone. And I have always liked the humility of that idea. The greatness was already there. His work was not to create, but to reveal.
I read somewhere that some ancient Eastern philosophies speak about this too. Fulfilment does not come from acquiring more layers, but from peeling them away. Letting go of noise, fear, clutter, ego. When you remove what does not belong, what remains is your real self, the one that has been there all along. The one you might not have noticed beneath expectations, comparison and doubt.
Dan Brown hinted at something similar in his novels, although wrapped in puzzles and symbols. His characters often search for hidden truths scattered across cities and centuries, only to discover that the answer was there from the start. They did not need to find something new. They needed to interpret what was already in front of them. Discovery, in those stories, was not invention. It was revelation.
I think life works the same way. You do not need a ‘new’ version of yourself. You just need to uncover the version that got buried under the busyness of living.
I see this in people I meet every day. Students who think they are not smart enough but ask questions that reveal depth. Friends who think they are not strong but carry more than they realise. Colleagues who think they are behind in life but quietly move with integrity and kindness. There is so much goodness already there, but we are often too focused on what we are lacking to notice it.
When I reflect on my own life, especially the years after my surgery, I realise that growth did not come from gaining something new. It came from peeling away fear, learning patience, finding gratitude, letting go of the need to prove anything. The person I became was not someone I invented. It was someone I rediscovered.
So perhaps the goal is not to create a better self. The goal is to remove the noise that hides the one already there.
It makes me wonder how many of us are trying too hard to be extraordinary when what we really need is to be honest. How many of us are measuring ourselves against someone else’s life, forgetting that we do not see their excess stone, only their final sculpture.
Let’s accept that something good already lives in you. Something steady. Something worthwhile. Something that has been shaped by every struggle, every memory, every small victory you have collected along the way.
And maybe that is what the lightning was trying to say that late afternoon. Not to chase a different life, but to notice the one already unfolding in front of you. Not to force change, but to clear space for it. Not to become someone new, but to become more fully who you already are.
Just like the angelic figure hidden in Michelangelo’s stone.
Ir Dr Nahrizul Adib Kadri is a professor of biomedical engineering at the Faculty of Engineering, and the Principal of Ibnu Sina and Tuanku Bahiyah Residential College, Universiti Malaya.