It's Time

It's Time -- Imagine Dragon (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOatp-OCw3E)

As the graduation season dawn upon us, congrats to the class of '18 who smashed the finishing line for
your Bachelor / Master Degree with grace, determination and pride.

RUN CHILD! NEVER LOOK BACK! BE FREEEEE :D 

Quite a lot of my friends have been sharing their concerns and doubts about their future with me recently. So I compiled some of my personal thoughts regarding the 'new life' that is right in front of us into this blog post, hopefully it will benefit someone somehow sometime. PEACE.

As this is the season where job market is flooded with tens of thousands of fresh grads, apart from looking for a dream job, I would like to suggest we look at the bigger picture of where we would like to end up in the next 5, 10 or 30 years ahead. 

Because to me, that sense of purpose is what keeps us aware throughout our daily routine, it navigates us in the amidst of countless choices we will need to make in our life.

I remember back in kindergarten, we were asked about our dreams and ambitions. Back then it was easy, we have doctors, teachers, lawyers, architects, policeman etc. Our choices were limited as our world was small, but now we know more about the outside world and the variety of choices this world is embed with.

We know quite enough about the world for now, and I think it is time for us to know more about ourselves.

So now I looked back on my kindergarten dream job, mine was 'doctor', but I know I never liked medicine or biology, I wrote it because I wish to help people one day, to make their life easier. Maybe you didn't want to be a teacher facing those living creatures with IQ < 50, but you wanted to increase the society literacy in some regards. Maybe you didn't want to become a lawyer, but you wanted to make this world a fair place where justice prevails.

We have to understand that we are not define by our occupation nor the outfit we wear, but the values and the responsibility we bear. So in this post I would like to emphasize on the impact we could bring and our greatness instead of our career prospects.

I believe we all have the ability to do something great, like improving education in low income region, stepping up the healthcare program for the forgotten folks from the countryside, leveling up our infrastructure in the rural areas so that the kids can go to school without much hassle or even stimulating economy stability in third world countries. 

I know it all seem too far and too big, but for me as a human being, if what I am doing is not making someone else's life better, it is a waste of opportunity, and I know I could've done better. I am not saying that we should start BIG, but we can start from making one life easier at a time, from ourselves, our family and then the community subsequently our nation. 

Too often people stared at me blankly when I suggest we do something off the grid, it doesn't sound legit neither it sounds possible to them until it is done. I appreciate care and cynics, but trust me, living big dreams and challenging the impossible will be the impetus that drives you forward and live a better life.

The content below is meant for optimists with an adventurous heart to do great things, and if you wish to read further, welcome to the club! But first let me reinstate that this adventurous path was never easy where pessimism is part of the journey and we have to be sure that the mental cost of fighting a battle uphill is the ticket price we are willing to pay. 

In our society, we often don't do big things because we're so afraid of making mistakes that we ignore all the things wrong today if we do nothing. The reality is, anything we do will have issues in the future. But that can't keep us from starting. -Mark Zuckerberg 2017

A simple question that induce the importance of taking action now, who will make HERE a better place for our future generations? Keep in mind that those heroes in our time are now are in their 50's, sooner or later we will need someone to do the job and who is that going to be? Us.

I found that people have a nice euphoric assumption of "someone else will':

someone else will build a better nation,
someone else will connect everyone together,

someone else will reach out to the poor,

someone else will improvise the technology we currently have.

But the truth is, they won't. We will.

We live in a time where improvements are taken for granted. I remember 10 years ago 3G internet was a big thing where holding a 3G phone feels like a boss, but now we are preparing to embrace 5G; back then shopping means carrying a trolley in the shopping mall, but now everything you need is few clicks away from our phones or tabs. Does anyone remembers the telephone cable we use to connect to the internet? Where you hear the weird sound beeping from the modem? Wifi that we are using nowadays sounds like a magic back then.

Look at how far we've come! However, all of these don't come from thin air, it is the result of those technologists who kept on banging on the limitations and visionaries who vigilantly stretching out to the stars while we lying on our bed at night waiting for the change.

Every discovery and improvement in our humanity is the result of that small portion of people in this planet pressing on, knowing more, digging deep and doing what is left to be done.

That small portion of people could be us. And it will be us. 

For we are the most talented, tolerance and engaged generation in our nation's history, thanks to the opportunities created by our previous generations. With god grace upon us, we shall make it worthwhile and deliver a better tomorrow to our next generation.

No one can achieve great things in a day or two, let alone a fresh grad. If you cannot do great things, at least do small things in a great way. If you need to sell socks, then sell these socks with creativity and pride, do what you have to do but never let it kill your dreams.

Every job every sector has a unique way of describing the world, but people who excel in their job from what I have seen, mostly because they have also discovered the greatness within them. They possess the sense of purpose, the passion and the self-acknowledgement of their impact to the people around them, the organization or even the community.

To be great at whatever you are going to do, appreciate the greatness within you even if no one else does is not a choice but a necessity. Just because people have not discover your greatness yet doesn't make you a useless person; just because you are working on your way to accomplish your purpose, doesn't mean you are worthless now. It is the journey and the progress that matter in the end. So start moving if you haven't already.

If you have not yet find your passion, keep searching, talk to more people and keep looking up and out. I can't guarantee that you will find your passion in your first job, but if you keep on discovering and knowing more about yourself (what you like and don't like), embracing challenges and changes, eventually you will come to a better place. 

I am positive that we can be part of something great, we can be part of the change that our generation has to offer.

From a third person perspective, the first step towards discovering your own greatness is to start doing something now, as time goes by you will believe in yourself more from the small tasks you have accomplished, and the poll for what is possible will be lifted higher and higher. With timeless creed and persistence in your work, in the end you will realize your greatness and your grace has indeed changed the world for the better.

It is time for us now to put our hands on the arc of our destiny and bend it a little bit towards the way we want it to be. All the best to your future endeavors!

There is no passion to be found in playing small - settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living -- Nelson Mandela