NochNoch.com

Sometimes I feel like an ungrateful little b!tch. I am under no financial pressure at the moment and live comfortably and yet I complain I’m not doing what I want. I’m living the dream, as many would put it – but whose dream?

hen I look out the windows, those sweeping the streets, my maid, my driver – do they have the luxury of listening to their hearts and do what they are passionate in? I doubt it; they’ve got a family to feed so they have to do whatever job they can lay their hands on.

I feel distressed for my maid sometimes: both her and her husband moved to Beijing to work, and their daughter is taken care of by the grandparents back in Anhui province. Imagine a childhood without loving parents and what of parents not seeing their child grow up? I had a sudden urge the other day to say to my maid to bring their daughter to Beijing and she can stay at my home after school before going home with my maid and I could pay for her education here.

Environment forces some to choose the practical way – will this little girl grow up and think to follow her passions or find a job that pays the most? Probably the latter so she can elevate the living standards of her family. Will she one day break down from the stress of work and ask herself why she is doing what she is doing, or will she mechanically work as hard as she can throughout her life?

I dare say many of us out there wonder what we are doing everyday, and why we are not happy and how come we have to do what we have to. I dare postulate that every one of us is depressed to some extent.

We feel empty as if our souls have been drained into a drought and we thirst for life.

Yet we are reluctant to change the circumstances.

Some feel that nothing can be changed so deal with it. Others are scared of taking that plunge. And yet others are unable to do because they have a family of 8 to feed. We all get caught up somehow. And then we dish out money at bookstores reading self-help books on how to be happy.

Really, does it take a 500-page book of instructions to tell you how to be happy? At the end of the blah blah blah, they all just tell you one thing: be yourself. I can tell you that – YOU can tell you that. So what’s preventing us from being so? Why are you still bound by the number of days of leave you have on your contract?

Those of us, who can lavish in dreams, please do. And please act on them. There are less fortunate who cannot afford such extravagance to dream yet.

And after you have realized your dreams, help others to do the same.

Be you.