How to Succeed When You Have No Past Hardships

I notice that extremely successful people had painful past and hardships during their younger times. My big boss, for example, lost his father before reaching his 12th birthday. The deceased father seemed to die after having been abducted by the Japanese troops known for their brutality. “He must have been dead as a prisoner,” he said. No corpse was found but the father never showed up ever since. From that moment on, his family lost all the assets and lived in poverty. And after what happened to him and his entire family, he had to move to live with his aunts, who unlike my aunts were so mean. So mean he thought they avenged him. For what reason? I have no clue.

Another example is JK Rowling, who in her childhood was suffering from poverty, having a dysfunctional father, and was struck badly by her mother’s death. To add to the list, she lost her first marriage miserably and had to earn a living for her baby alone. Depression caught her for years.

The next is Shania Twain who lost both of her parents  so suddenly due to a car accident and worked as a bread winner for her siblings at 25. The very young Twain knew something weird happened between her parents when her mother got beaten up by her father at night. Violence is such a nightmare for a child that young.

I then came to a conclusion or, I’d rather say, a wild hypothesis, that to succeed, one has to suffer so much as if s/he could not bear the misery another second. But life had made them go through that horrible phase, because the suffering is pretty much inevitable.

But my case is different from theirs. My family is, thank God, relatively functional. My father is not an abusive man or abandoned his family or drunk and left us for another woman. They love me, I love them. Everything is so normal. Things are fine and smooth. In short, my life and I are like what the community expects.

That brings me to a question I raised out of frustration:”How can I succeed so outstandingly when I have relatively problem-free a life?”

Nuts huh? So should I create these hardships on my own to push myself forward faster? But how? I’m afraid I’ll break if I can’t make it. Ah, maybe that’s why I can’t succeed for now. The hesitation always makes me linger, put off things, and at last weep on the corner of my rented room.

This has got to be stopped!

National Kids Day: Enjoying Childhood to its Fullest

My niece, falling asleep while coloring the animal pictures.

I forget whose quote that is but it encapsulates what I’m about to say perfectly.

Every and each parent wants their kids to grow up and old. That’s what I usually hear. “Eat a lot so you’ll grow bigger” or “Drink this so you’ll grow taller”. How many times we as kids had heard such an idea during our childhood, conveying the constant message of “being an adult is much better and being kids is inferior”?

Yes, in some way I have to agree on this proposition that being an adult is way cooler. Kids are constrained in every possible way to live as a real human. They can’t drive a Porsche legally. They can’t watch porn. They can’t drink even a sip of liquor. But hey, is that what adulthood essentially means? Excessive self-indulging? Overflowing sense of proud?

So why is being kids and enjoying our childhood a lot sexier than getting our first driving license in the first place?  Simple. Because responsibility SUCKS. Here’s the down side of adulthood every kid should cringe, responsibility. Not only we have to be responsible for each of ourselves, but also for people around us, whether or not you love them.

So if you’re one of those previously happy kids wishing to grow old faster , you may find yourself wrong. Nothing compares to the bliss of chidlhood. Being carefree, spending your entire day to play with whatever you think and cry afterwards because you fall down or stumble upon something on your way  is worth more than any money the adults on the planet combined. In fact, they spend a fortune just to feel how to be kids again because some of adults don’t even know how to cry anymore. They don’t know how to let go the pain within themselves. As a consequence, they go numb psychologically, deteriorating emotionally, withering spiritually and decide to seek professional assistance, i.e. psychologists, psychiatrists, and (recently) technological aids that offer ‘quick fix’ to channel our emotional trash…social media.

*So this very post is actually to pay tribute to every kid out there and inside me. Let’s be childlike( not childish) adults.