me farting my views.
Yo. Joel here. I just came back from sending a friend off at the airport.
Here are the basic facts.
The guy’s name is Bao Long. (BL)
He’s 23 this year.
I knew him thru a badminton senior of mine called weiluo(WL).
WL, BL and a few others have been good friends since sec 1. But for the last 3 years or so, BL missed almost every outing due to his busy schedule.
And he’s going UK for a 4-5 year course and will probably stay about another year or so to work.
Here's the long story.
Ok. So it was like any other goodbye session at the airport. We went there, talked to him and his family. And sent him off. Im just gonna skip to what I was thinking about the whole time.
Firstly, I felt really different when talking to BL’s family. All this while, I was brought up to think how impt education is. How it would bring about “happiness” thru status, wealth and other comforts. But seriously, when I looked at them, I don think they are any less happy than Bill Gates. Neither do I feel that Bill Gates is any happier than them.
And the sister said something like, “money is not so impt, if you really cant study then just come back.” And the mum added, “we don wanna send a healthy son there and welcome anything less back when you return.” Sounds pretty ‘understood’ I suppose? Maybe it was because BL wasn’t from a particularly rich family, but it seriously felt different today. I felt that sending him to UK to study for more than 4 years would probably cost their life savings and they are so willing to ‘invest’ in something which not only does not guarantee anything back, the ‘investors’ themselves are more than willing to forfeit everything that they have/had, just in hope to see their son succeed. It struck me that this is like the UNCONDITIONAL love that God wants to demonstrate thru Jesus. He knew that He would not get everyone’s love. But still, he chose to die the worst death ever recorded in history, for us. Just (and only) because we are His creation, nothing more and definitely nothing less. Wah. If every parent could demonstrate such a level of love, it would probably lower the suicide rate, the number of youths with low self esteem, and those who desperately seeks to gain everyone’s approval.
Next was when we were walking towards the entrance where we had to say our goodbyes. Wah. It was only then that the full weight of not-gonna-see-BL-for-the-next-4-to-5-years really fell upon me. What made it really worse was that I was reminded of my grandma. I wished at that point of time that my grandma was like BL, leaving us only temporarily. The feeling of things not being in your control was really difficult to deal with, esp for someone like me. But well my grandma had moved on, BL has the opportunity to pursue his dreams and I’m reallllllly happy for him.
And when we said our final goodbyes, someone said “once a bro, always a bro”. Actually, I really didn’t expect them to be so close as BL have not been in contact with them for such a looooooooong period of time. (BL only turned up once in the last 3 years of outings.)
And on my way back, I was just thinking about how stupid it is for people to think that the pasture’s always greener on the other side. Clearly!!! Today’s lesson shows that life is not about what is thrown at you but what you make of the things thrown at you.
1. We hear on the news and from friends all the time about how really poor people make it big and become doctors and lawyers. But at the same time, we hear about how children are not able to study because of the environment they live in which are not as conducive.
2. For those who have always been striving for wealth… I have seen with my own eyes really happy people who are less than average financially and I’ve seen people who are filthy rich but yet are not at all happy/satisfied.
Really, when I take a step back and look at the bigger picture. I see that there’re always 2 extreme outcomes to a very similar scenario. Actually, I felt reminded of one of the Ten Commandments which states that we should not envy others. i felt that there was a new understanding as it can also be paraphrased as “don’t point your fingers and push responsibility.” More often than not, people blame everything around them for the bad things which happen (e.g oh man, I cant run as fast because my shoes are 1 gram heavier than Usain Bolt’s) . Although I must say that some are really not within their/our control (e.g the passing of my grandma), I still make my stand and say that we have the freedom and ability to choose our response. And that (our response) would pretty much make up our character and determine our future…...
God bless BL and anyone who reads this.
