The life cycle of ambitions

When we were young, we had ambitions all noble and great and action packed. I remember writing "cita-cita saya adalah untuk menjadi seorang doktor" during BM class in my karangan book. I remember writing the same essay, with different jobs, and they involved being a nurse, a police (I didn’t know about corruption back then, so yeah, they were noble), a firewoman (such thing?), a teacher… I enjoyed drawing these people in my exercise book, next to my karangan.

Then i grew a bit older. I started liking to draw - women, dresses, pretty hair, and pretty faces. We started having bigger dreams that were glamorous, and preferably ambitions that would earn us money enough to buy a big house and hire 20 maids for our mother. Fashion designer topped my list. I think actress and architect was somewhere there.

Then, secondary school came. The big dreams still hung around, but things started getting more practical. For instance, the fact that u are not going to be an actress and get to act with Leonardo DiCaprio is starting to sink in. I started participating in debates and considered being a lawyer. The fashion design thing hung around for a few more years. But in the later years of secondary, somehow it seems like childhood is ripped outta us together with all those big glamorous dreams of how we’d want to live our life. We struck out ‘glamorous’ from the ambitions and focused on dollar signs instead. Survival in the real world started to sink in. we looked for professions that would earn us higher income – maybe we didn’t want 20 maids anymore, but a nice house and car and wardrobe full of clothes topped the list. We wanted professions that would get us out of this country where we ‘immigrated’ to.

I could barely make up my mind. I considered being a dentist. I thought about law. I thought about dietetics. Architecture. I remember how much I wanted to become a vet because I was passionate about animals and I hated being helpless when they needed help. I flooded myself with options. That was, until I came face to face with the terrors of STPM.

I wasn't one of those people who know they were born to become something, but only now has it occurred to me that I am doing accountancy, something that has never occurred in my list of ‘cita-citas’.

 It proves just how much reality is a bitch. You can’t go for your big dreams when you were little because they just aren’t practical. Then, when you have decided on something, there’s a gazillion things standing in the way, money, being the biggest of the gazillion.

But it’s okay. While I used to fret over what to do after the horrendous Form 6 experience over the little options I was left with because I was a lazy bum who sat on my ass all day not studying hard, I guess i am now able to see that there’s no one way in getting somewhere. Provided the world doesn’t end soon, I guess I can still do things I like to do because there’s no way I will allow myself to slough in an audit firm working late nights and growing white hair.  But for now, I should keep in mind that when I’ve decided to do something, it’s only appropriate I do it well.

This is emotionless, blur writing from 4.50am when I decided I need a break from tax assignments. Penned down because I started wondering how I ended up here, doing this – searching up case law after case law, taking up accounting. But I can’t really imagine doing anything else. =)