Streams of Life (7)
After a long wintry holiday all the students are coming back to school now. I, with my friend, hence decided to attend the English Corner at the university near our current living place last evening. It was a nice place to hang out and meet new people last year. Of course, my friend was more welcome there. People simply just swamped him. But I didn’t mind much really. Anyway, it is natural for
people to assume if they talk to native English speaker, their English will get
much improved.
So basically it was also what happened last night. Soon after we arrived there,
he got swamped. I was left aside to talk to one guy who simply couldn’t get
himself lined with the crowd. But our conversation went on okay at the beginning
. He told me that he just arrived in Shanghai last spring, and crowed as this city is, he quite appreciates tons of opportunities available here. I told him that my situation was quite similar to him for the moment. I appreciate the up-beating pulse this city holds, but in the meantime get a bit annoyed but the high living cost here. Eh, then what did we talk about? Yes, he mentioned that he didn’t like what he was doing at the moment, but got no choice.
Well, I don’t how people think of themselves these days. Are they really willing to sacrifice their interest for what they dislike? This guy had been studying
in micro-electronics for seven years in school and finally made a master degree
of it last year. Then he came to Shanghai and worked for some multinational electronics company. Things would almost look all right if he didn’t complain to me
, someone he just met the first time, that how indifferent his job and what he learned in school were to him.
It’s just so weird. I asked him if he had thought of making a change. Or put it
another way, would he consider to have a change in the future? The answer was
nay, and the reason was given this: He thinks he gets no any other advantages over others except on his major. So he won’t risk himself in any case. Well, here
I am not judging him from the few minutes’ talk. But I did talk to my friend about this on the way back. I told him I could not understand that why people were so willing to give up, and why they were so unwilling to take any risk.
What the guy was saying all the time seemed to suggest that he wanted to double,
triple his salary or even more in the near future whereas reluctant to take any
potential risk. He can’t be bothered to find out what he really wants to do, simply because he can’t afford another seven-year-or-so efforts; he can’t be bothered to strive for what he is doing now, because long before he had defined it
as something too boring.
But if it is the case, who will be to blame except for him himself? It’s he who
traps himself and can’t let himself go. Being stable is a state of mind, which
all depends on how you think of it. I remember in The Wealth of Nations by Adam
Smith, it mentioned that risk is inevitable if you want to win. People who win
are people willing to challenge themselves, and people who are losing or will lose are those who take hold of so-called stable stuff tight and won’t simply take any risk. It’s like a cocoon, the more it wants to protect itself, the less leeway it leaves itself, and the less chance it can free itself in the end. So wouldn't life be more fun and promising, if he tried to act the opposite way?...
