he said it in a less eloquent and in a more...'manglish' way in the meeting room the other day but it does hit home, at least to me.
i never considered myself a 'privileged millennial' and maybe that's why i've always felt different from my peers.
while my friends went off on holidays with the money that their parents provided them, i, on the other hand, only could travel once i started a regular job. while most of my friends studied abroad on the hard-earned wages inhabited by their parents, i had to complete my American degree at a local school and go on a special scholarship. while most of my 'millennial friends' grew up with iPhones and laptops being gifted to them by their parents, i had to earn my own money through the part-time job that i had whilst at college just to get that beat up Samsung Galaxy Y that only lasted me a year.
and as i cruise through life and see more of my millennial friends get jobs and continue to be spoon fed, i realize that life is unfair. i'm pretty sure that there are people who have it worse than me. i should know, because i've gone on enough mission trips and community outreach programs to know that people are going through stuff, sometimes involving matters of life and death.
once again, during a friendly catch up with my best friends, I felt small.
small because i'm the lowest paid of the group. small because they have embarked on adventures that i could only dream of but never go because i didn't have the money. small because my job in advertising is 'pitiful', that i have to answer to my boss and clients during the weekend or that i am sometimes expected to stay past 6pm and 'not have a life',
i had two ways to go about it: 1) throw a pity party for myself or, 2) work that situation and make the best out of it.
there will be a point in life where we can't blame our circumstances or our upbringing or the past. there will be a time in our lives that we, as adults, need to make choices and take responsibility for those choices. there will be a point in life where we have to suffer because suffering teaches us to be better people. because, in the words of my boss, sometimes you just have to go through shit in order to finally reap success.
and then I ask myself, how do i define success?
is success a four-billion dollar apartment or a Porsche? is success a passport filled with stamps or a Prada-filled closet? i guess success, to me, is not about the externals.
i would define success as that feeling you get when you see a smile on someone's face after you've helped them with something. success would also be achieving my goals that i have set for myself. my goals of community building in different parts of the world and the goal of being a kick-ass writer. success, to me, would also mean a handful of quality, fulfilling relationships where you know you can always fall back on the people you love.
as i finally come to a conclusion, i guess it's pretty simple for me. i was never born with a silver spoon and i don't think my life will get any easier or more luxurious than how it is right now. and i'm okay with that. i'm okay with doing a job that sharpens my skill as a communicator. i'm okay with saving up to travel the world on my own hard-earned cash. i'm okay with helping people, with learning to be humble and giving, to look out for the ones i love.
"Finally, graduates, our greatness has never, ever come from sitting back and feeling entitled to what we have. It’s never come from folks who climb the ladder of success, or who happen to be born near the top and then pull that ladder up after themselves. No, our greatness has always come from people who expect nothing and take nothing for granted -- folks who work hard for what they have then reach back and help others after them...
...I encountered students who had every advantage –- their parents paid their full tuition, they lived in beautiful campus dorms. They had every material possession a college kid could want –- cars, computers, spending money. But when some of them got their first bad grade, they just fell apart. They lost it, because they were ill-equipped to handle their first encounter with disappointment or falling short.
But, graduates, as you all know, life will put many obstacles in your path that are far worse than a bad grade. You’ll have unreasonable bosses and difficult clients and patients. You’ll experience illnesses and losses, crises and setbacks that will come out of nowhere and knock you off your feet. But unlike so many other young people, you have already developed the resilience and the maturity that you need to pick yourself up and dust yourself off and keep moving through the pain, keep moving forward. You have developed that muscle."
- Michelle Obama, excerpt from her speech at the City College of New York, 2016.
Read the full speech here.
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