Age vs Goals

It is interesting to note how the perception of our goal changes when we aged. From 4 years old to mid teens, we have a perception of what we call as “fantasies”. We “fantazise” ourselves as superheroes. We wanted to save the world and the universe. We wanted to stop bad guys and get rid of all the villains. In a fantasy world, nothing could stop us from doing whatever we felt was right and just. Then we grew into our mid teens, from 14 to our mid twenties, we have our “dreams”. We “dreamt” to be the CEO of a well known corporation or being the nation’s leader or even being a famous actor or celebrity. When we are at that age, our rational mind tells us that “dreams” are achievable with a lot of hard work whereas “fantasies” are not. When we reach our late twenties and leading to early forties, we have “ambitions”. We began to have attainable goals such as being the Head of our Department or a Manager in a company or a Principal of a school. These are our ambitions where with some efforts and hard work, we know they are attainable and achievable. When we come to our fifties and above (my group), we become “realists” where we are conscious of our own limitations and doing what we are capable of. We cannot, of course, discount the fact that there are people in my age group that are still living in a “fantasy world” or a “dream world” or an “ambitious world”. There is nothing wrong imagining yourself living in those worlds, however, just make sure that your feet remain grounded as we can’t go against the order of nature. Being a realist at my age means able to wake up each day, able to stay healthy both mentally and physically, able to meet up with friends and able to eat and drink without being assisted. That, my friends, are life’s true blessings!

Silver lining in the Pandemic

With the lockdown still in place in most places and the pandemic still being declared globally, COVID-19 has caused a lot of hardships but at the same time, there are also some positives that can be derived from the current situation. As nasty as  the COVID-19 may be, I would also like to think that it is a way of “mother nature” telling us to re-look at ourselves, at our surroundings (ie: our environment) and to re-adjust our lifestyle or perhaps even to slow down in this fast moving world. If you look at our lifestyles 6 months ago and compare them to now, we can see that many of us are not only learning the phrase “taking it easy” but also to practise them as well. We are also beginning to appreciate life by taking the time to admire our beautiful surroundings. Suddenly the air that we breathe is becoming fresher, we are calmer and more patient. The pollution and noise have been reduced and the roads are a lot less busier. I can’t help but to imagine whether this was how life used to be in the old days? We also began to notice the small changes taking place all around us which we normally ignore or didn’t even give two hoots about it. I have also noticed that people are now more discipline (ie: queuing up wherever they go AKA “social distancing”) being more hygienic (ie: washing their hands often and wearing masks). People have also learned to respect each other’s personal space - something that many of us have been advocating for many years but never seem to make any headway until now! I hope you will be able to appreciate and see a silver lining in this situation we are all in and make the most out of it.