Disclaimer: This post is not meant to be objective about life. Neither is it meant to be taken as the whole truth about life. It is life as I have experienced, and what I have learned. It may be inconclusive (because I’ve only sailed through this journey for 17 years), and it may be bitchy (but it’s all part and parcel of life).
So if you’re ready, we can begin.
Firstly, there are soooo many descriptive words to define what’s life. Life is an emotional roller coaster ride. Life’s good. Life is the name of a game. Life is not a bed of roses, et cetera et cetera. Now that you get my drift, behind all these descriptive words , life is simply life, and it can only truly be defined by you. You may say “BUT LIFE IS SO COMPLICATED, HOW DO I EVEN KNOW HOW TO DEFINE IT?!”. Well, to analyse life, we’ll need to start off by acknowledging that life is multi-faceted.
For me, to keep things simple, I view life as 1) Work & Ambition, 2) Personal Time , 3) Relationship, 4) Identity.
1) Work & Ambition
Work is an integral part of life that takes up a lot of our time. As a student, work to me.. is all about school. Moving on from primary school and secondary school, right now, I’m already in a JC. Every graduation represents a great leap, and work just gets more challenging. In JC, where getting S / U is pretty common, I know of so many people who failed. People get eliminated from interviews, people fail their tests, people are forced to drop their H2 subjects. But the important thing is, even though failure is bitter, it really means something.
I have failed before. I left high school with a record that’s almost as blank as the one that I entered high school with. I did not win any competitions, I did not get any scholarship, and now, when I’m asked to fill in my achievements for any application, I feel ashamed. But does it directly mean that I have no hope of getting what I want? (Say DUH NO tyvm). It’s really crucial that we do not lose hope. If you made a mistake, think in retrospect where you went wrong, then change, and finally, move on. DON’T GET DEFEATED BY THE FAILURE, INSTEAD, DEFEAT THE FAILURE!!!
2) Personal Time
As DUH it may sound, personal time is all about what you do when you’re not at work. It is when you unwind, catch up with your friends, let your brain take a rest, or maybe you’d like to sort out some problems in your mind. Personal time to me is really important. Without personal time, I’ll be totally burned out. Like what people say, 休息是为了走更长远的路.
But don’t underestimate personal time. There are people who screw up with their extra time.
Examples like,
– People who do not have personal time. (This is the super extreme and rare kind.)
– People who only have personal time, and nothing else. (Maple freaks, gamblers, alcoholics yada yada.)
These people.. are those that seriously have no life. So if you don’t want to fall into this category of people who have no life, it’s important that we all have a balance between chilling out and working it all out. 🙂
3) Relationship
Relationship itself is pretty complicated (encompasses family, friends, love and even strangers that we meet everyday), emotive, and irrational.
Something that I learned is that.. there’s no 100% guaranteed theory or principal that will tell you how to deal with a relationship. There are so many different ways that adults will tell you to deal with relationships. Some say:
– How you treat others will be how others treat you.
– How others treat you will be how you treat others.
– Get more experience, before you make your move.
– Be diplomatic, talk to everyone, be nice to everyone.
– Quality over quantity (or otherwise
– Just be who you are.
– Etc.
All these ways.. there are definitely pros and cons, because in this world, there are simple irreconcilable differences (YAY I used a phrase that I learned yesterday). But ultimately, I feel that if you had tried your best to deal with a person and can say for sure that you won’t look back without regrets should you give up now, then this person is simply not meant for you.
4) Identity
Everybody have their own identity, but I realise that many people do not know what is their identity. These people tend to be easily influenced by people around them. And when a problem hits them, they lose themselves, start to raise doubts about their character and existence, then they sink into an identity crisis.
It’s true that finding your own identity is difficult. With so many people who have already found their own identity, it can make your job of finding your own identity so much harder, because there always influential people who tend to impose their own values on you. I have experienced going for prep talks etc. Some will remind you of your original cause, but there are some where the speaker tries to indoctrinate their beliefs onto you. But that doesn’t mean you should simply adopt their values for the mere sake of having an identity, because that will only make you a clone. A clone of another person. (But of course if you have eventually thought through about it and feel that this is what you want, then there’s no harm in adopting their values.)
Having an identity is important. It determines how we deal with all the other aspects of life, such as love life and work. With an identity in place, we can make easily make decisions based on what we want to achieve. It gives us an origin, and it gives us a future as well. I do not want to advocate like.. what kind of values are good and what aren’t good, because that will mean I have to define what’s right and what’s wrong, which is impossible. But, ultimately, no matter how hard it is, find your own identity, and do what you deem right.
After knowing what you want, we all need to keep faith in what we’re working for. Keeping faith is important. It makes sure you walk in line with the direction, and not wander off into another path. Of course, being a teenager means that we’re all in a more-or-less volatile stage. Change is constant, and we’re all prone to change. So being so prone to changes, we may encounter many many many failures, and to be honest, failures suck, but don’t let that deter you from seeking the true self in you.
All in all, life is really.. complicated. I cannot claim that I’ve summarised life in this post that I took 1 hour and 45minutes to ponder over and write, because if that’s all to life, then what’s the point of living through your life? Why not just read through books on what’s life, and then just end it? So.. my message here is that, LIVE YOUR OWN LIFE, DON’T DOUBT YOURSELF, AND NEVER GIVE UP!!!
The Wicked Business 