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Phonnita Nakasint
G12/2
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St. Joseph Convent School
E-mail: black_coffee_30@hotmail.com
Tel: 089-140-1466, 02-398-6390
Once upon a time in a lifetime, I had…..
For ten years, Vichai had been doing something he doesn’t like.
At school, Vichai often received straight A’s with little effort. He was a model student. Everyone in the class looked up to him and always asked him to help with their studies. All the teachers trusted him to bring honor and success to the school.
Vichai finished high school when he was only sixteen. There was nothing more he could have learned there. His parents, a hotshot businessman and an ultra-successful corporate attorney, wanted him to study business in a prestigious university.
Since he respected his parent’s decisions, he followed their advice despite wanting to be a historian. He didn’t know if he would like business or not; however, he thought he would somehow come to enjoy it eventually.
With his excellent grades and recognition from several competitions in which he had participated. His entrance to university was without difficulties. Four years passed. Just as everyone expected, Vichai graduated with first class honors. He was a promising young student ready to take a big leap into the real business world.
Prominent companies were more than happy to offer him a job and approached him with alluring salaries offers. His family was undoubtedly pleased and selected the best company for him. He was quickly accepted and was immediately presented with a great deal of work.
After less than half a year, he felt unhappy, and after a year, he loathed it. Unfortunately, because of the pressure everyone placed on him, he felt uncomfortable about telling them the truth and continued working without any complaints.
In the tenth year of work, still maintaining the top position as best employee and suffering from tremendous reliance from both company and family, Vichai woke up in the middle of the night suffering from his usual awful headache. Suddenly, questions, previously pushed down, rose up in his mind.
“What have I been doing with my life that made me so unhappy and miserable?”
“Have I done anything that made my existence worthwhile?”
He had been thinking for a long time about the answers to these insistent questions but still, he could not find a proper one. Therefore, he looked into his memories of the past to find anything that would help him alleviate his tension.
He soberly scrutinized everything that he had done and realized unpleasantly that all he had been doing is what he didn’t like - work.
He never went on holiday because he was too busy.
He never had a girlfriend because work always came first.
He never had a chance to turn off his phone because calls could never be rejected.
Most of all, he never did what he had always wanted to do, which was to be a historian.
He questioned himself again and again, “What am I doing? Do I have to carry on doing what I don’t like?” and, “Why don’t I listen to my own heart? What should I do to make my life happy?” Eventually, in the morning, he made his decision.
You, readers, might have already guessed what Vichai would do next.
It would be quitting his job and becoming a historian. Am I right?
However, unfortunately, it wasn’t!
Conversely, rather than doing what he loved to do, he still opted to stay in the company and continued his wretched life. He decided to keep on living with everyone else’s expectation instead of his own dream.
Have you ever wondered, “How many people are similar to Vichai in this world?”
Since we were born, pressure is placed on us by people close to us. The greater the expectation is, the more pressure a person feels. As for Vichai, it was everyone around him. The path of Vichai’s life had been set by people surrounding him. They were like navigators, trying to convince him to take the path that they thought would suit him best.
In general, after continuously being pushed, people often stop resisting and go along with the available options they have left. The same went for Vichai as well. That is why he was still going on working somewhere he hated.
In our life, we are afraid to let others down, fearing to disappoint them that we do not even have the courage to believe in ourselves. The reason Vichai didn’t alter his life by quitting was because he couldn’t stand failing to satisfy the expectations of others. Following his dream meant disappointing people who loved him and that was what he could not bear.
It is simple to be weak. We listen to our parents, teachers and others and then do whatever they want us to do. Since we are not the ones making the decision, we don’t have to be responsible for anything, in case, we do anything wrong.
If there happen to be any problems, we can just point our fingers and blame others, telling them “Because of you, my life is ruined! Because of you, my life turned out to be like this.”
The truth is we don’t have any rights to condemn our parents or even the educational system or the government for our failure. That is because we have to be responsible for our once in a lifetime chance – for our own future and do the best we can with it.
We have to ask ourselves,
“Am I sure I really want to live a life like that for the rest of my life?”
To be able to see our real potential, we have to be aware of what we are doing and know what is in front of us. We have to choose to do what we are skilled at, with confidence, courage and honesty. We also have to understand the nature of the occupation we are choosing, the effort we have to put in and the rewards we may receive.
We spend most of our time in our life doing work and other things related to it. If we do not appreciate the meaning of it, then we have not fully understood the meaning of life.
If we don’t know what we want or what our dream is, then we should draft what we are thinking. There’s no right or wrong or stupid or smart idea. We only need to use our wisdom and heart to decide if we are going do it or not. See for yourself who you want to be and what you want to do.
Our presence in this world is so short. It cannot even be compared to the time of the universe or the earth. This doesn’t mean that we need to live our life in a hurry. We don’t need to quickly wake up, eat, study, work, marry, and have children. We just need to make everyday worthwhile.
Remember, there’s only one chance in a lifetime to do this. It is not what we can achieve, but how we make everyday worth it that is really important.
So start asking yourself “Once upon a time, what have you been doing in your life?!”
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