Lately, some of my friends and I went through a bit of a grind, with life throwing whatever it could at us while we were busy trying to make things happen. As we all know, however, this isn’t our first rodeo. The challenges we have encountered and faced in our relatively short lives so far have already made us into who we are now, and I see no shortage of challenges growth opportunities for us in the future either. Occasionally, we will stumble along the way, because try as we might, in the end we are only human. But with much effort, we can control our priorities to subsequently manage our time and work ethic accordingly to ultimately rise towards conquering our inertia and accomplishing our goals. We are especially fortunate, as young millenials, to come of age at a time better than any other period in history to do so–with more tools at our disposal and more quality instruction available in general. Therefore, when we experience the inconveniences of sacrificing our precious time to voraciously learn a few more things, or even when we have to deal with the contingencies that put our whole lives on hold or kick us back to the drawing board, at the end of the day we should always strive to promise ourselves that we will continue or try again tomorrow.
As a young adult, for example, I remember every date that was cancelled, every party I did not show up to, every event I have opted out of, and every happy hour I have passed on. These days, it seems like on Saturday evenings I was studying yet another technical subject or curling up with a book about self-development, only to wake up on Sunday to social media notifications informing me that I had missed out on a concert of a lifetime or some fun social community meetup. I also remember struggling to continue focusing on learning after taking a step back in silence for the passing of a family member. During those times, nothing seemed better than to abandon the sublime project goals and lofty standards I had come to set for myself and settle in to a jejune, “normal” life.
After much self-reflection and rescheduling, however, I found that the siren songs of hedonist ideals have no place in our hearts when we forge on, with every small step, towards completing our personal projects that matter so much to us. Whether it is relentless self-improvement or developing the next big thing to change our world, I believe we will persevere. In the end, that is all there is to really do.
-Shwe