Today I found a video of a TV show in my country, King of Rap. His song is about him wanting to share his passion for rap with his parents. But like many other Asian countries, passion other than high grades, a better degree is not a good option to talk about in my country. You might ask why. The reason is simple. Most of my people are poor. We are too poor that we believe education is the only way that leads us to a better life. Why, you might also ask. Because our education is cheap, and I think I have to admit that in terms of return of investment, it’s actually the easiest investment in my country with a high chance of high return.

In my parents’ time, they had a poor living condition that the only thing they think about is to have a better life. However, as our society developed, my generation has a better life now. My generation start to think about different things, like the meaning of our life, what is our passion, our dream or what should we do to achieve it. It’s just like some ancient philosophers, who were actually rich enough to not become slaves, thinking about the origin of the human race, the origin of the world. As a result, there is a difference in the way of thinking between my generation and my parents’ generation. My generation starts to chasing things like “passion”, “dream” because all of the people around you, at the same age as you, do so. You will easily find the inspiring story about some people chasing their dream their whole life and become successful at a specific time of their life. I was someone like that. Chasing my dream to become this kind of person, chasing my passion to achieve this kind of success. I start looking at people around me and asking myself, why they can do it and I can’t. And I was sad, disappointed in myself.

Back to the story of the singer in the TV show, my story was almost the same. I was an electrical engineering student back in my undergraduate years. I had heard that my parents had actually prepared for my graduation, where I would work for. But I was not good enough to become an electrical engineer. I still remembered one evening, I sat down with my parents in the dinner and talked about what I wanted to do and what I didn’t want to. I told my parents that I’m stupid, I’m bad at electrical engineering. And that I think I had found something I might be good at, which is the thing I’m studying now as a master student. I still remembered the look on my mom and my dad’s face. They were sad, anxious. I never know the true reason behind that look. But I think that they did not think that was a good choice, because, in my current area, they don’t know anything about it. They don’t have any friends in this area so that they could help me when I am stuck or having problems. I still remember my dad just looked at me and said “If something happens to you, you’re on your own”. And I told them “I take full responsibility for what will happen to me”. They were not okay with that, but they are happy with what I chose now.

Doing things you like feels good. But finding something you like to do is hard, really hard. I found myself luckier than many people because I had found something I like to do. However, peer pressure in my generation is high. Many of my friends feel sad because they don’t know what they like. And one thing often comes up with that is “Don’t worry. You will find it one day. Just don’t give up.”. I also did say something like that. And till now, I realize that it was stupid. Why? Because not everyone will find something in life that they want to follow. Trying to encourage people to do things like that could make their life miserable. My girlfriend used to tell me that she does not know what she wants to do, or what is the mission of her life. But I know one thing that she is still happy. She’s still happy because she loves people around her, and people around her love her. It is because of my girlfriend that I realized that meaning of life, passion and dream are bullshit. They are just something we make up to make ourselves feel like we belong to the community. People who know what to do in life, you are lucky enough to live a life you want. But for people who don’t, it’s fine. Why? Because an absolute definition of things like the meaning of life, passion, or success does not exist. As long as you are happy with your life, it’s fine. Why? When you spend too much time on yourself, you will likely forget about other beautiful things around you. If you need a reason to live? How about “to read this”? Like I told my girlfriend “to meet me and love me”.