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I grew up believing that dreams do come true. I was taught that as long as you work hard, follow your heart's desire, do good, and pray to God, your dreams will someday come true. We were also taught that If you fail once, try again. And if you still fail, try harder. As they say, try and try until you die. Really?
I just turned 40 last year and I guess there is truth in the saying that life begins at 40. A few days after I turned 40, I took the time to assess the years that went pass me. I assessed my career, my finances, my family, and my life in general. I realized that the 40 years of my life was not that easy at all, in fact it was difficult and painful most of the time. Living in a third world country like the Philippines made it even more difficult especially for someone like me who was born in a family whose income is just enough to support our basic needs. As a child I enjoyed little comfort and luxury. I grew up in a state where we do not have the means to buy comfort or even at least try some luxury. My parents were both educators by profession and teachers during my childhood (or maybe until now) were mostly underpaid. My parents' income were just enough to provide our basics.We do not have extra money to buy what we want, we only buy what we need. My father who is very frugal to the point that he will turn away from simple purchases and will do away with life's comfort so he can save portion of his small income. My mother, who I already mentioned was an educator, worked multiple teaching jobs - mooning from one school to another. She worked day, night and even during weekends. Her income also experienced the same fate, not enough to compensate her effort. Her only consolation was that teaching was her passion. Here in the Philippines, your passion is not enough to feed your family. Sometimes we have to give up our passion because it is the practical thing to do. And that was the philosophy I grew up with and honestly I hate it.
When I entered college, I took a course that was practical. A course I thought will help me land a job that was why I took a business course and I majored in Marketing. At first, I was not that enthusiastic about that course but as we went along with the different subjects like Management, Business Accounting, Entrepreneurship, Organization and Marketing, I began to realize that this was the course for me. That was the time I envisioned myself that I will be a successful businessman and I will own and manage multiple companies someday. And from that day on, I was in hurry to finish college so I can already find a job and start saving my income that I will use it to put up my business.
After finishing college, finding a job was easy but my only difficulty was to accept job offers because salaries for newly graduates was so low, it was just enough to pay for my transportation and for my daily lunch. I had no choice, I took a job with that kind of pay scale. I was unhappy that time for two reasons: first was my salary, how can I be happy with that. Second, since my salary was not enough to cover even my basics so how the hell can I save something for my future business?
Day after day on my work, my enthusiasm towards my dream was slowly falling apart. Reality was slowly messing up my future plans of putting up my own company. With the amount of salary that I was earning that time it will probably take me forever to save enough to capitalize my future business. Thus, that was when it all began - when I started to drift away from my dream... To be continued
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