Cheap Destiny

I'm beginning to believe in a thing I've started referring to, in my head, as "Cheap Destiny".

Some people think that you don't choose your own destiny, that it's just like fate, and wherever you end up is just... it. I was one of those people, a really short while ago. I saw my life as something I had very little to no control over, and what happened in my life happened TO me, and never BECAUSE of me.

But I've changed teams.

I've slowly learned that things don't have to happen to me if I don't want them to, and I can replace them with other things that I choose. I can choose my own destiny. Which may sound like a very simple concept to you, but for me it's been a long, arduous journey to that realization.

But with that realization comes another, slightly more somber one. Sometimes, we choose sadness. We choose the way that's bound to leave us dissatisfied, because we can't stand the idea of being let-down or disappointed when we'd set our sights so high. We choose our Cheap Destiny.

I'm trying not to do that in my own life. The thought of setting myself up for disappointment does terrify me, yes; but the thought of waking up one day to a Cheap Destiny, in which I never took any risks or tried anything new to better myself and my life, scares me more.

I'm trying to choose my Great Destiny.

As Time Goes By

I've just been thinking back over the past twelve months, and I've realized it's amazing how much can happen in such a short time span. This time last year, I was a brand-new high school graduate with now a clue as to what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. I was just getting ready to start my first full-time job and was actually - imagine this - excited about it, I had plans to go and study theater in Australia, and I was really excited to see how it would all work out.

Well, I haven't been disappointed, that's for certain; this past year has been one little adventure after another. Having said that, almost nothing that's happened since last June was planned in any way, or even suspected. But I suppose that just makes it all the more exciting. Last June I had not an inkling that in a years' time I would be a) working towards a career in journalism and preparing myself for an internship with the Economist, b) renting out my own apartment and living more or less entirely independently, or c) have gone through several relationship fiascos, one major best friend blunder, one slightly less than agreeable flatmate and a few hundred online stalkers (okay, I might be exaggerating a small bit, but you understand).

So yes, I think it's safe to say that this year has been full of surprises, both pleasant and... otherwise. But it just makes you realize how quickly life can pass us by, doesn't it? One day you're a student studying for your IB exams and thinking they're the most intellectually difficult and challenging years of your life; the next, you're working dawn until dusk six days a week to support yourself, you've forgotten the meaning of the term "social life" altogether and you're wondering what on earth you had to complain about all through your secondary education.

Some days I look back and wonder how it's possible that I've lived in Hong Kong for almost ten years already. A decade! Yes, I definetely have the friendships to show for it; but there are still people that I'm just now getting to know, even though they've been there all along. Isn't that terrible? That a person can go nine and a half years and never get to know someone who's been there practically every single day of it? So occasionally I have to ask: How long are we going to sit here and let life just slide quietly by? How many opportunites are we going to let slip through our fingers like sand, and how much more time are we going to spend being thinkers, rather than do-ers?

The way I see it, young as we undoubtedly are, there's so much to see and do in the world that we shouldn't be wasting a second doing anything less than working towards experiencing as much of it as we possibly can. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go and see what I can do about discovering a new life-form. Well, you only live once, right?