Success or Failure?
So it's September now. Time flies. Last time this year, I was sorting out my wedding back home in Asia. Now I'm sorting out my European wedding. Time flies. To repeat myself. Of course, it's all relative dependent on our activities and ages.
We got the church sorted today. They were nice, allowing us to use it for free as long as we cleaned it up, which was good. Tomorrow we'll check out the restaurant, since I was a little lazy and tired yesterday. But I really don't have anything against this one we'll be going to because we've been there before for meals and we liked the place and more importantly, the food. If a restaurant serves bad food, you might as well not go there. Nopes, food is the important factor first and foremost.
I spent today pretty well, considering that most of my work was done quickly. Checked up some sites on self discovery, and work-related sites. Apparently when we were growing up, no one thought of job counselling for us then, or job charts that fitted most into our interests and passion. No, we were brought up to think in a one dimensional scope. We were brought up believing that in order to succeed, one had to have a safe life, with a safe job. Get a steady paycheck, even if the job is not something you love. It's better than chasing your dreams and living from job to job not knowing where your income will come from, they reason. Therefore, be an engineer, doctor, businessman. You'll have a good life, relatively. You might not love your working life, but you won't be hungry.
This is how asian society is like back home. The pressure is high for to succeed. If you don't, you'll be branded a failure forever. Relatives talk behind your back, they shun you. In front of your face, they'll smile and act polite, but behind, it's better not knowing what they're saying. Ignorance is bliss. And to make it worse, this process starts when you're a child. You're immediately compared to your classmates, to your friends who come by your home to visit, to play. You're born into a competition you don't really want to be in. Childhood is to enjoy, for a child to develop, to learn about himself. It's a continual learning process. If you deny a child his basic right, then you deny the child himself. Parents are there to guide, to discipline, and not to make the child feel unloved for not making the "expected" standard. I came from this world, and I don't want to go back to it. If I have kids, I don't want them to face that world. It's a fallacy in itself. So what if you're the top student and won lots of awards but has a shitty life? In the end it's all empty and meaningless. But by the time you figure it out, it might be too late already.
It's amazing how hypocritical we are in this world. We lift the successes onto pedestals, we ignore and belittle the failures. I still choose to believe for every person who's had a success, he's had to have a few failures along the way. It's the man who perseveres till the end that crosses the finish line, not the one who starts well but stops halfway. Determination to set my eyes to get to the goal of my dreams.
For every failure and mistake, I must take away some knowledge, some understanding of why it didn't work. Then I'll improve. If we all were only having successes then either we're all really lucky or we're perfect people. But since no one is perfect, sooner or later we're bound to fail. Like a line in Miami Vice that was said, "You can't outrun gravity, sooner or later it catches up to you" - at least that's how it sounded like. ^^ Constructive failure is the road to eventual success. So if I fail, but learn something important from it, I'm still better off than someone who was scared to fail and learnt nothing.
That's the problem I believe my home is having. We're so indoctrinated to be a success immediately that we're paralyzed when we have to act for fear of making a mistake. Without any guidelines, we're lost. Creative freedom is great only if you know what you want to do. If you have never taken a step out in your life, then it's only a chain holding you back. Once you're branded a failure, you're out of the loop. No one wants to hang around a failure because it associates you with a loser. In this world, we're taught to only love winners, not losers. And that in itself, is a tragedy.
We got the church sorted today. They were nice, allowing us to use it for free as long as we cleaned it up, which was good. Tomorrow we'll check out the restaurant, since I was a little lazy and tired yesterday. But I really don't have anything against this one we'll be going to because we've been there before for meals and we liked the place and more importantly, the food. If a restaurant serves bad food, you might as well not go there. Nopes, food is the important factor first and foremost.
I spent today pretty well, considering that most of my work was done quickly. Checked up some sites on self discovery, and work-related sites. Apparently when we were growing up, no one thought of job counselling for us then, or job charts that fitted most into our interests and passion. No, we were brought up to think in a one dimensional scope. We were brought up believing that in order to succeed, one had to have a safe life, with a safe job. Get a steady paycheck, even if the job is not something you love. It's better than chasing your dreams and living from job to job not knowing where your income will come from, they reason. Therefore, be an engineer, doctor, businessman. You'll have a good life, relatively. You might not love your working life, but you won't be hungry.
This is how asian society is like back home. The pressure is high for to succeed. If you don't, you'll be branded a failure forever. Relatives talk behind your back, they shun you. In front of your face, they'll smile and act polite, but behind, it's better not knowing what they're saying. Ignorance is bliss. And to make it worse, this process starts when you're a child. You're immediately compared to your classmates, to your friends who come by your home to visit, to play. You're born into a competition you don't really want to be in. Childhood is to enjoy, for a child to develop, to learn about himself. It's a continual learning process. If you deny a child his basic right, then you deny the child himself. Parents are there to guide, to discipline, and not to make the child feel unloved for not making the "expected" standard. I came from this world, and I don't want to go back to it. If I have kids, I don't want them to face that world. It's a fallacy in itself. So what if you're the top student and won lots of awards but has a shitty life? In the end it's all empty and meaningless. But by the time you figure it out, it might be too late already.
It's amazing how hypocritical we are in this world. We lift the successes onto pedestals, we ignore and belittle the failures. I still choose to believe for every person who's had a success, he's had to have a few failures along the way. It's the man who perseveres till the end that crosses the finish line, not the one who starts well but stops halfway. Determination to set my eyes to get to the goal of my dreams.
For every failure and mistake, I must take away some knowledge, some understanding of why it didn't work. Then I'll improve. If we all were only having successes then either we're all really lucky or we're perfect people. But since no one is perfect, sooner or later we're bound to fail. Like a line in Miami Vice that was said, "You can't outrun gravity, sooner or later it catches up to you" - at least that's how it sounded like. ^^ Constructive failure is the road to eventual success. So if I fail, but learn something important from it, I'm still better off than someone who was scared to fail and learnt nothing.
That's the problem I believe my home is having. We're so indoctrinated to be a success immediately that we're paralyzed when we have to act for fear of making a mistake. Without any guidelines, we're lost. Creative freedom is great only if you know what you want to do. If you have never taken a step out in your life, then it's only a chain holding you back. Once you're branded a failure, you're out of the loop. No one wants to hang around a failure because it associates you with a loser. In this world, we're taught to only love winners, not losers. And that in itself, is a tragedy.
posted by Dippers at 1:45 AM
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