Admiration..

For a long time now I've always had the tendency to admire people quite easily...

When I was younger I would be inspired by Helen Keller's story, Mozart, Beethoven..
Then there was the typical fangirl stage of admiring actors, actresses, singers..
Not to forget the various chefs and hosts of food channel programmes..
Writers, speakers, teachers, people who were bold enough to put a piece of their work out there to be talked about whether positively or negatively.

Then there were people nearer to me.. 
Entering secondary school, college and uni I was swimming in the big sea.. primary school felt like a pond because the school was just so small.. but the amount of talent that you swim around with in secondary school, it was pretty overwhelming at first. The brainy, the sporty, the speech-givers, the leaders..it's silly but it sort of always made me feel like an ikan bilis swimming with the big fish. I could only dream about becoming one of them but I'd still always be that small insignificant little fishy.. 

I realised that the common thing that all these people I admired had was confidence. A lot of them were talented people but above all else, it was the confidence I saw that I felt drawn to. It was something that I lacked, something that I wished I had more of.

I'm glad to say that I THINK I have more confidence nowadays.. Your skin automatically grows thicker once you've tried and failed and stood up again numerous times. And even though I know I'm still a work in progress (and perhaps always will be? coz when are we ever perfect??), I know better than to let certain fears hold me back from saying or doing certain things.. 

-llen-

Realistic dreaming..

Sometimes I wonder where we should draw the line between dreaming about achieving great things and being realistic in our goals.

I guess I can understand why parents or teachers or even our friends always encourage us when we tell them we have an idea, a dream, a big dream! Nobody wants to be the one to crush someone's dreams.. and who knows, maybe some dreams may appear big but they're achievable..

But then at some point, surely being realistic is important to save ourselves from disappointments?

At some point you realise certain dreams aren't yours to realise.. you could argue that it means the dream doesn't mean that much to me so I don't pour in all my blood and sweat into achieving it but I guess my point of view is that we all have certain limitations to our abilities and whether they can be overcome purely by effort is sometimes difficult to say..

For now I still find myself dreaming big from time to time.. but I've come to realise that dreams don't have to be big to mean something or to motivate me..

-llen-