Decide Your Future
Dedicated to whom struggling getting his future
By : Fernando Sihotang
I am inspired by a book to write this article which its title is “the winer is not who has never failed but is who has never given up”. I like to read this book because of its content of helping to find out the natural spririt for every reader who reading it. But, I am trying to understand each word but I couldn,t understand it fully. I took some paragraphs which say about the crisis in human lives that it will never go out from human beings.
While I was reading this book, I was trying to remember my past and now which I would never escape from crisis and stress. After I have already read this book, I was remembered that I have to share this theme to anothers. There are many people who consider their lives are always disturbed or fulfilled or graced by the crisis and stress or maybe unfriendly to their lives . They also think the problems they have now are more heavy than the other has.
Before I got my scholar opportunity at University, I tried to get my better through the bitter struggle. I had to plant in the farm to cover my school fee at High school and might be at my college. Fortunately, in 2003 year I got my college in the state university through passed the general selection was held for two days. In the announcement day of the selection result, I got up and looked for the result advertised in news paper however I was not sure that I would get it. But, I was happy because admitted in the university. The next problem was how to pay my scholar fee in my condition. I was thinking my problems always come in to my self although I have just got my happiness. The farming outcomes were not quietly enough for paying my scholar fee, so I had to borrow a few money from anothers who wanted to do it.
The story above wants to describe to us although we are in the climax of happiness, remember we will get the other problems nearly. After you have just finished your job through hardly work then suddenly you get another in the same day. You will think that you are not capable to solve the problems or you will think that you are more terrible than anothers. I tell you that we are similar in getting the problems. Occasionally, we think that crisis comes in the time when we can not survive our life. It is not merely crisis according to that illustration. Crisis will be accompanied by stress and they will disturb every body in our mind.
How the founder of amerika built that country and brought their families by passed the storm in the ocean and sufererd the diverse disease and worried, etc. They were convinced that should they can find the new place affected by the Renaisance in Europe, they would get the new born and the new life. They will feel more comfort. I dare to tell that they were the winers in their time. The illustration above does not tell about the founders’ failures so they could learn from it and they did not have yet good books how to get their goals with learnig and reading books.
We can be the winer if furthermore we are in the modern age now. I do not want to tell that we must be the generation rather than our ancestors or predecessors. We have the access better than theirs.
Have you ever thought that your problems are bigger than my problems?I encourage you to reduce your thought. Before I got my studying and working opportunity at Serbia this year, I got a big trouble. One day I lent someone’s laptop to finish my thesis but in the morning I saw that it was there no more. Someone had stolen it from my place. I was thinking that it was my bad day and I wouldn’t have a good future caused by my desperate mind. Fortunately, I was realized that I have a chance to change my future by myself. I searched the websites reffering to scholarship and volunteering abroad. I had a new problem, they required fluent in English as a specific requirement. I couldn’t speak in English especially speaking and structure. But, I fought with my self and learnt it just for two months before the selection. How does someone know English fluently just in two months in his learning?It is imposible. I tell you there is nothing imposible in lives.
Ultimately, I reached my a half-dream to getting my dream comes true. My application frequently was accepted to be processed in Jakarta. In my test, an interviewer asked me, “How dare you apply in this opportunity without have an English skill Fernando?”. I answered her,” I have never taken an English course because I do not have much money to cover it, I just learn English two months before this selection”. She was surprised and might be she thought “Unbelievable”. “Please give me chance to improve my English for three months and I will show you I can develop it”. They gave me opportunity and before my departure to Serbia, I have been improving my English skills. Now, I get my dream comes true. Where is yours?
I expressly give you an illustration above where you can compare your problems with mine. Two days before my departure to Serbia, my require to meet Prof. Bungaran Saragih was accepted by himself and we met in his place at Bogor. He told me, I am the lucky man. “It is hard to get the chance like you are now” he supported me. I quoted his word that it becomes my motto “Make your future with what you want to do”. He asked me, “what is your goal Fernando?. I answered him with the simple answer, “I want to be an academician and practician”. He continued, “ get your future, your goals with what you want to do and do not delay it before it would become a glue, your decision to go to Europe is the great experience and I adore you”.
I am proud in my self that a former of Agriculture Ministry of Indonesian Government welcame and adored me. I was conscious that there is nothing to be late in my future. I could change it through my goal and how to make it works out. I can change my crisis and stress became a device for my struggle. Should someone looks my educational results, they reasonably will not believe in my achieve going to Serbia, but everything can be changed. Everybody denied my efforts to get that scholarship, but now I shut down them.
I want to remind you that everybody has problems. Do not think that just you have it alone. I believe that crisis affects the change and affected by the change itself. Crisis affects the change which impacts to negative and positive feed-back. It depends we respond the crisis with the different manner and how we can manage it so it could be an asset in our lives. But also the crisis can be affected by a change. For example, in the beginning of Indonesia reformation era on at 1998, many people were happy with the new freedom of falling down of the authoritarian president Soeharto. But after the political transation marked by the change of president, the same people want to go back in their new order. They do not care what will happen in politic or social or utopic-democracy, the important thing that they can buy foods and feed their family.
We never know when the crisis and stress will come. We even never know what will happen in our lives. It is like the robber coming in to your house and robbing your Gold, money, diamond and all of your luxuries you have.
The Pursuit of Happiness
By Fernando Sihotang
Dedicated to whom doesn’t meet the happiness yet
While my friend and I were taking a walk on the street near to our living place, he asked me,”what do you think about happiness?”. He showed me a rich man who driving a good car in the front of us. Thus, he told me that guy will be very happy with his owning, he can do everything he wants with having a lot of money.
There are the men who believe in money. They are convinced that money is the answer of all the problems. Friends are people we buy with money, happiness is the result of having lots of money, and the purpose of life is to accumulate as much money as possible. Then there are the believers in education, who told that all the world’s problems can be solved by education. If we are stupid, reading the right books will make us intelligent . If we are ugly, there is a book that can teach us how to become beautiful.
I answered my friend’s question that many rich men are not happy because of their means. They have to keep their means from the robbers who may rob it when the sleepy night. I also answered that many poor men are not happy because of having no money in their pocket. Should they look out someone who driving a good car or having many houses around of them, they would say “I want to be the rich man”. But they are not aware that they will get the similar feeling.
We can not say the happiness is measured based on the above illustration. If we measure through it, we will not meet the happiness throughout the world. So, how to meet the happiness in our life? I don’t want to be rich because of someone is going to steal or I don’t want to be poor because of poverty is contemptible. I will choose to be in the middle position or vis a vis.
I didn’t say that we can not be the rich man. The very condition makes many people worry to their material possessions. They regret that they have got it from their hardly efforts through hardly working and making some business. They will hate the neighbors around of them, especially if they are the poor men and they find out the daily foods by collecting the garbages in the trash and selling it to an agent. The rich man will hate them because of that condition.
I think money is not the one answer of some problems. It just functions as the complementary good that it can be used for buying foods, clothes or may be for renting the living place. Do not use money for pursuing your happiness.
I am inspired to write this article while I had ever watched a movie with its title is “The Pursuit of Happiness”. It tells us how to understand that everything is money but money is not everything. I have an illustration adopted from that movie which presents that his wife left him and their son because he does not have job to cover their needs daily. He tried to find out the escape through applying some vacant positions advertised in the newspapers. He struggles to pay his son’s scholar fee without helping from his wife who always demands him.
That movie shows me how to treat money is not everything. Ultimately, He found out a good job as a stockbroker in the big company. He always teaches his son how to treat money as he does. I compare what that movie tells me with what George W. Forell tells in his book. In the one hand, that book tells about how the human beings should treat the money as their needs and not as the primarily tool of happiness. The other hand, we can not defenselessly give up with the condition. We are the result of God’s creation in most particular than the other creatures according to the everyone’s faith. The human beings are given responsibility to maintain God’s creations including themselves as the His most particular creation.
According to the statement above, we should maintain ourselves as a part of the responsibility. A question appears that how the poor man survives his life if he does not have money to covering the needs everyday. We will think that he is not happy because of the condition makes him. He is the marginalized one, so we are saying that it is his “destiny”. Now the question is who is going to be the peasant if all the people are teachers? Yes ofcourse, there is meaningless should there is no peasant and we can not produce food and fulfill our needs.
In contrary to the poorness, we can not give up with the condition. We have to escape from that condition through deciding our life future must be better than yesterday. Try to find out a job and leave out inhabit of begging like a beggar.
. One thing I want to remind all of us that we should to know that money is not everything. Set up your self in to the better way. Don’t think that money can make you happy although by having lots of money you can buy everything you need. I encourage you to learn more how to appreciate your time and make the useful thing. If you can live forever,what do you live for? Should you have much money, what do you look for more? Should you have felt that you are wealth now, you can find out money much more for helping the other ones who can not feed their children. Do not think that everything is enough until you have already shared it to the other ones.
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