In the afternoon of March 21, 2011, I happened to talk to one of my long-time friends from primary school to secondary school to now. (I’d like to keep his name anonymous). In fact, since high school, we have not been so far away from one another, yet we just have not had any opportunity to share with one another positive thoughts about life.
After high school and in university, we chose different majors to study, thus having walked on different paths since then. While I have been living my life in literature and education field, he has been living his in technology field. Even if it has been so, we still have not lost contact; we still hang out to have a couple of beers and enjoy doing many other things together.
However, as I mentioned, we just have not talked much with each other about our life pursuits. So, when we had two hours this afternoon to discuss, we really did a good job in helping each other understand and see our next missions in life. In this article, I am going to share with you the theme of our discussion, which was: two stages of development. I hope you find it interesting and beneficial.
The following are two stages of human’s development.
I. Choose whether to do or not to do
My friend and I agreed with each other that sometime and somewhere in our life, we have to make a tough decision whether to do or not. We believed that this is the first development of an independent person who has to decide to do or not do something for themselves.
When we talked about this development, we compared our lives to some of our friends’ back in high school. Since high school, we have seen friends who have decided to do something—such as getting a job or going to school—for themselves and excelled in the way they have chosen. However, we have also seen friends who have decided not to do anything, but drinking and messing around, and ending up nowadays as a jobless and aimless person.
During our talk, we were quite happy though we did not express vividly our happiness because we knew that we have been one of those who have chosen to do something and worked for our life. It’s not important what we have done, but at least we have done something and have not rested.
Now, as for you, are you a doer or non-doer? Over some certain period (say 1, 2, or 3 years) of your life, have you been at least done something that you are kind of proud of? Or have you been resting so much and letting your life slide through hoping everything would turn up just fine?
II. Choose to do the right thing
After finishing talking about stage one of development (choosing to do or not do something), we continued to discuss development in stage two.
Our discussion of stage two of development also involved comparison, but this comparison was between what we’d done and what somebody else had done better. While discussing, we compared our accomplishments gotten so far with those of one of our friends.
In brief, this friend that we were talking about is a male friend and very much close to us. After high school, he has chosen a radically different way of life from almost everyone in my high school class. Instead of pursuing a degree in university, he decided to become street-smart. That means he has worked and run businesses starting from very small ones. Today, he is considered one of the most financially successful people amongst our network of friends from that high school class. He is not rich yet, but at least he has more money than us.
Talking about him, we also evaluated how we had lived about life and earned to support our living. It appeared to us that even though we had done our thing, our thing might have not been the right thing to do or else we would not be having financial problem. We questioned “how come are we having money problem when he doesn’t?” and unanimously answered that we must have not done the right thing.
Apart from finance which was our focal point of discussion, we also talked about many aspects of our life including lifestyle, health, education, and etc. We dug into those aspects because we also wondered whether we had not done them the right way, and by ‘right’, we meant ‘at or above standard socially accepted’.
Now, as for you, supposed you had chosen to actually do something in your life, you would also have to reconsider whether the thing that you have been doing is the right to do. Over a certain period of time, you may compare the results of your action with that of other people whom you know.
*Note: it may not be always right to compare what you do with what others do, but if you do it occasionally, it can be good since it allows you to see your progress.
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