I should've known better that it is not an answer a parent would love to hear. Maybe I should've answered, "I want to be a Marketing professor and am going to finish my PhD by the time I'm 30" or "I want to be a prominent market researcher so now I'm applying to five multinational market research companies and will be having an interview with one of them next week". But, of course, answering those would be a lie.
Because honestly, all I want to do is keep learning and creating. When Dad kept questioning my life plan, I joked by saying, "Nah, I just want a rich husband that would pay for my joining short courses in universities around the world."
And my Dad laughed, "Yeah, good luck finding a rich guy."
Of course he knew it was a joke (my Dad kinda thinks I'm not classy enough to marry a Don Draper-type. After all, Dad, who wants a Don Draper?). Of course I would not do just that. I know for sure that learning without actually practicing or implementing the knowledge would be a total waste. After all, millennials like me just want to make an impact in this world.
Now let's talk about "creating". To create, to make something from scratch, is a very very exciting process. Especially--let me repeat--especially, when you have the resources to do so (money, skills, talents, network). As we progress in life, the accumulation of our skills and networks, when capitalized, can be put into the creation of something bigger than ourselves. Name it--a business, a movement, even just a blog.
Creating seems impossible at first. I remember the first time I set up my own movie blog and no one reads it. But then one day, I wrote a review about a local movie and the post went viral. After that, my blog always has visitors, as lame as the post might be. And we're not just talking about blogs here. I mean, surely one of you has tried building a business, getting the first customers, or trying to get people joining the cause you started.
Oh.. the beauty and agony of creating. And along the process, you continue to learn. There's no finish line. The process keeps surprising you-- it either gives you an idea that sometimes you're better than you think you are, or that sometimes you're just a loser.
That's what I want to do for the rest of my life. And I'm sure that's what many of you also want. To learn and to create and to hop on the endless self discovery train.
But then reality hits most of us. We can't afford to learn, we can't afford to create. There's too much at stake. We have to compromise. We have to let go a little part of ourselves--our naivety.
But hey, that's another beauty of life other than the beauty of learning and creating: the beauty of growing up. The beauty of having limitations. The beauty of compromising. The beauty of letting go.
At some points in our lives, it is inevitable that we should let go our naivety, be it when we were 17, or 25, or even 40. Actually there's another word for that--it's called being responsible.
So when you arrive at a point where you should let go everything you believe in, just let it go. Later in life you can still compromise. Add the skills, network, and money to extend your limit. So one day you will get back what you've given in.
Like the caption I wrote in my Instagram several weeks ago,
"Maybe, just maybe, at some points in our lives we need to let go of the most fundamental thing we have always believed in--a principle naturally embedded within ourselves. Maybe we should be less all-or-nothing, less of a non-conformist, and more of a normal, made-to-adapt human being. But before we arrive at one of those points, we still have time and we still have chances and I guess we should use them very, very well."
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