Dream the possibilities

'Why do we have education?' you may ask, 'Why do we have to learn all the stuff we are not interested in?' Honestly, I have the exactly same question to ask. Why can't we just follow our dreams, try out all the necessary skills we are keen to learn, and become an expert in a certain field? Why must we waste our time in studying those subjects which are not in our future career list? There is really no right or wrong answer to these questions. No one can foretell what our future will be like, not really 100% correct. And don't forget that we are constantly shackled by money, the universal entity which allows us to obtain things we desire. In order to get money to keep yourself survive in this world, you can do anything can't you? From what I have observed, there are several types of people who juggle with their career and their dreams in different ways.

The Dream Fanatic

They are extremely obsessed with their dreams. Literally nothing can stop them from realising their dreams, not even money. They don't care about any dissent nor even assent. They are completely independent on their own. They spare no effort just to add one more counter to the life game designed by themselves. Even if in the end, they fail to realise their dreams, they will never give up because once they stop trying, they'll find nothing interesting to do. Their ways of doing things are much appreciated by others since we all have dreamt to do whatever we like without worrying about other things we don't like. However, their methods simply do not work in real life as all their one-directional blink pursuit is solely established on the expense of many other important things in life as well as the detachment from society.

The Money Addict

This type of people are entirely the opposite. In order to get money, they'll do anything they can, even if they need to forgo their dreams. They'll choose the courses that can find them a prestigious job in the future and help them earn a lot of money, even though they may not like the content of the courses. They'll keep a fake smile when chatting with someone they don't actually like just because the person is deemed by them a potential business cooperator in the future. Perhaps really in the future this kind of people can be successful and earn a lot of money, but their lives are really too tiring and arduous to live. Their friendships are built on superficial lucre. Their dreams become mere sacrifices to their careers. Yes, their material standard of living is rising due to the accumulation of properties; however, their true happiness level is indeed dropping. 'Money can't buy true happiness' becomes a testament to their ways of living.

The Wise

They strike a balance between their career and dream. When their dream mismatches with their career, they will not blindly forsake one and pursue the other. They understand that their current interest can be changed over time when they acquire more and more knowledge. They also know that all the things they do are actually preparation for their future careers. They cast a broad net to try out different things, meanwhile, they hone their skills to go towards their dreams. Some of them are quite lucky, they end up earning money by doing the things they like. For some of the unlucky guys, they make themselves enjoy what they are doing and at the same time still don't forget their dreams and make them as their hobbies instead of careers.

The Engineer

This kind of people are quite interesting. They are super creative kind of species. They have the belief that they will eventually get to do what they like as their jobs. How do they actually achieve that? They try to modify their dreams to suit their careers. They make numerous innovative guesses about how the boring but important things they are learning can be related to their dream careers. How can they put all the knowledge they learnt from different subjects into good use so that they all serve as boosters for their dreams. In their mindsets, there is no such thing called failure or disaster, since everything happens, either good or bad, will all be twisted towards a simple direction -- their dreams. This type of people are really happy in life as everything they do, being it interesting or not, will all finally become things they enjoy doing.

I don't really know what kind of person I am now because there is still a long long way to go and only time will tell me the truth, but there is one thing for sure. I think we need to dream smartly, and this seems to answer the questions at the start. At this age, we are still exploring the world. There are still so many things we have yet to touch on and yet to find out whether they suit our interests. Hence, what education can motivate us to do is to try out different things, to gain more knowledge and to understand society better. And of course, education has many functions other than imparting knowledge like shaping our moral compass and teaching us social skills and so on. But I don't want to talk about them in details at this moment. What we learn now may not be what we like, but no one can guarantee that we won't like it eventually after we've explored 100% of it, and maybe, this subject will be the key to our future success. Still, no one would tell what our future will be like.

Therefore, don't dream blindly, don't dream for the worst case, but dream wisely, dream all the future possibilities. Open up more routes and add more details, so that you can clearly identify which route to take in your future's unremitting adventure.

5 November 2016, 16:40

Li Yuxuan

#life #reflection #dream #possibility