So I've hit yet another stage of life. Whatever I have been through in all my years of living as a student in various places, no other time has felt as daunting or as worrying as this.
I have always had plans as to what I was going to do next. Now, in saying this, I must also say that, in spite of all my planning, none of the plans I made materialized. In my life, reality has always eventually surpassed my dreams. This is why my faith in God has always remained unshaken.
My life has not been easy - I have experienced so many different kinds of hardships on my road alone from the time I was 15, and in high school in a different place to what I was previously unaccustomed, far away from my parents. When I was younger, we as a family, moved twice, for my dad's work, and then, I alone, have moved at least 8 times more for educational purposes (since I was 15).
I have been through bullying, harrasment, unsafe situations, an overwhelming work load, some failures, heart ache, fallings out, betrayal, heartbreak, the challenges of living alone, and fitting in, 8 times over, in various groups. I have had family problems and felt so alone in the world, and to top it all off, I have also had money difficulties in the past few months and the hopelessness that comes with a fruitless job search that is usually done for a first job.
Transitions in my life have always been excruciating, in one way or the other, occasionally presenting even the most unlikely situations to me. Not that other people don't have problems, and I'm not trying to say that I have bigger problems, just that my problems usually have weird complications. All that said, God has always been faithful and incredibly benevolent to me in the end, as reality has always surpassed my wildest dreams. It's how I have always felt humbled, knowing that I have a higher purpose in life than my own selfish ambitions, and that God is truly wondrous and mysterious in his ways.
I press on in my life, enduring all that comes my way to get to this higher purpose.
Whenever I feel dejected and poor of spirit, I look to the journey I have made thus far, and take courage and hope from the fact that all is not lost. It has never been. I have survived more than I can discuss on a public forum.
There have always been times when my future seems to look bleak, and somehow, irreparable, but it has always bounced back and each time, been even better than normal. My life has been like a crashing flight that miraculously takes flight from time to time, transforming into a bigger, better flight each time, and soaring higher and higher than I ever dreamed possible, only to be affected by turbulence, or worse, and then, pick up again - all by the grace of God, I'm sure.
So it is in this assurance that I plod on, through my days of trawling through job sites and making applications and phone calls, typing out resumés and cover letters and sitting with an eye on my phone, waiting for a call or an email giving me good news; but being faced with a million 'no's, in the form of well worded emails or polite phone conversations, when I phone in to follow up, that disappoint me. In spite of me relentlessly pursuing job leads and bolstering my own confidence saying that I will eventually have a job, dejection sets in from time to time, and it takes me a while to get back on my feet and go out there again and again.
People
You see a whole new side to people when you job hunt, as it is when you are faced with other challenges. Some people genuinely care, some people couldn't be bothered, and yet others rub your nose in the fact that they have jobs and you don't.
Then there's the fourth kind. People who secretly judge you, but are overflowing with fruitless, outdated advice for you, and the only thing you will get from listening to these people is more dejection, and if you are stupid enough to take their advice, you end up regretting it altogether.
It is a difficult time for anyone in that situation, and the best companion one can have in such situations is themselves - to be at peace with yourself, and to be yourown friend saves you a world of hurt, as most people cannot understand exactly what you feel, and most people don't know how to be around a person going through this phase of life.
That said, I have also had the opportunity to meet the kindest, most nicest people, making me wonder at the stark differences between people. I guess it is why we have the greatest gift of all - we get to choose our friends/associates.
The Internet
I thank God every single day for we are the generation who have the most powerful tool in history - THE INTERNET. We no longer have to solely depend on the people around us to help us. We get to contact people all the way across the world, we get to network and contact a friend of a distant cousin's colleague's husband about a potential job. All we need is the perseverance to keep trying every means possible, and our trusty friend, the Internet will never disappoint.
I honestly don't know what I would be doing without it. I was taught in school (in the late 1990s) of the fact that the Internet had then inspired this new phrase "the world has now become a global village". I was also recently reminded by Buzzfeed, that we are living in the future our predecessors dreamt of, and made movies about.
Well, who knew, even as late as the 80s, that one day, people could write their thoughts and feelings in a blog, on their phones, no less, that can be published online and accessed by the whole world? Definitely not the average man.
I regularly send copies of my resumé to the people I get in touch with about job openings...from my phone. I don't think this was as easy as it is today even as recent as decade ago, maybe not even 5 years ago.
We do so much these days and take so much for granted that people, even a generation ago would have thought unimaginable.
Anyway, back from my massive tangent - job searches suck. They make you worry, and feel hopeless, but then, we live in a world where everything is possible. High school drop outs become the most talked about Scientists and Entrepreneurs, and we have the world in our hands - quite literally, as we have smartphones that do more and more each year.
Of all my travels, my most recent journey, a flight journey of 8694.8 Km/4691.7 Nautical Miles (4+8h of flight time and a lay over of 7h in between), across 3 time zones; showed me how common flight travels are now. It's like getting on a bus. I travelled on a budget airline this time, and it was chock full of people who were quite literally from all walks of life. It was interesting, although exhausting because the aircraft seemed too cramped, because it held far more seats than an airline like Singapore Airlines would allow for a flight that size and that for a journey that long. I also feel a little embarassed complaining about the comfort of a flying conveyance that makes a journey that long seem easy, when only a few centuries ago, people travelled on foot and on cattle boats.
I was still astounded by how we, as humans never cease to progress, and the growth is so rapid now, picking up even more speed every minute, that all of us now have yet another skill that our grandparents didn't have - the skill to keep up with all the changes that are taking place around us.
Sometimes I wonder if the world as we know it has hit puberty, and if things will once again plateau and settle for a few centuries before aging starts, and things begin to slow down again. As, in my little experience so far, everything has always been a cycle - one day we triumph, and another, we fall. We mourn, regain our strength and come back. Fashions creep in, peak, go out, and come back. This is basically what happens in the stock market too. The world as we know it depends on this reliable cycle. Does the world follow the same pattern?
Or is it going to keep getting faster and faster, until one day, we cease to exist as humans, but begin to live as high functioning machines/entities programmed to perform a set of functions, devoid of thought or feeling, year after year, not aging, not dying, just working? It's beyond my human ability to comprehend the way the world works - I feel like a baby ant in a vast expanse of farmland, not fully knowing how big it is, not understanding much of it beyond the next, say 50 yards at most.
Our Great-grandparents thought "village", our parents and grandparents thought "country", and we now think "world" probably our children would think "planets", if interstellar travels become possible one day.
Anyway. My point is, and always has been that hope is never lost. Take heart, as I say this to myself as much as I say this to the reader, that, as Scarlet O'Hara so frequently said, "Tomorrow is yet another day". I have always aspired to have as strong and undefeated a spirit, as hers, and I am closer to it than I was 10 years ago.
With that, I close, as Joey Graceffa does, saying : "May the odds forever be in your favor!". :)
