On the Eve of Turning 23: Resolutions for the New Year
In the quiet confines of my room I welcome the addition of another year to my age. Without much fanfare (even less compared to the little I had last year in China), but the quietness before the storms of a whole new episode in London is giving me just the environment needed to contemplate exactly what I want and need to do as a 23-year-old. In a year when the title of a new college should start to wear off, whole new characteristics and undertakings are definitely to be pursued and achieved.
As wishes of happy birthday stream in from Japan and Korea (where it is already the 30th), I am slowly coming to the grip with the fact that I am turning a year older, and one more year closer to fully independent adulthood. Obviously, a few short paragraphs cannot detail all the little things I would like to do to complement my step forward toward that "full adulthood," but I would still like to at least summarize a few general directions I would like to pursue in my "New Year's Resolutions"...
The first has to do with self-confidence. Although over the past years, I have become more and more vocal and more freely like making myself heard in the public, the driving force behind such is often a matter of arrogance and insecurity. It is because I am afraid that I am always forgotten by others and that my importance is underestimated that I speak out. I brag for the sake of some devious, perverted sense of psychological satisfaction, only to exacerbate that innate illusions of grandeur.
Only greater self-confidence can bring about change. Expressing my opinion should become less of activities in attention-grabbing but more of an outward manifestation of who I am as a person. To be truly proud of my identity, it is not simply sufficient to let others know about my character, but to interact more closely with others, listen to what others have to say about me and themselves, and improve who I am based on those interactions. Of course, the interactions will be done without losing that sense of myself.
And speaking of confidently interacting with others hearing the news of others surely make me feel just how behind I am. In particularly, I have been indirectly informed of many high school and college classmates of mine (around the same age), already getting married or at least intimately attached to their significant others. Although my strictly anti-traditionalist views are only compatible with late marriages, I cannot help but respect these equally young acquaintances for being willing and able to confidently shoulder the responsibilities of having a family.
For me, at least, the time has come for a semi-permanent romantic relationship. And London will certainly give me the opportunity to start anew on that front. It would be the ultimate reflection of self-confidence and ability to hold my own in an undoubtedly brilliant crowd that I am sure to face at London School of Economics. Holding steady to my sharp observations of the female population, I hope that good results on that end will allow me to achieve the thing in Europe that I did not achieve in Japan, i.e. the establishment of a permanent career.
Furthermore, as I go about finding that love and career of my life, I do also realize that my relationship with my family does need a complete revamp. In some ways, my inability to communicate effectively with my own family is an underlying cause of my lack of self-confidence, and being able to communicate well at home is directly related to ability to interact with strangers. Sure, I do not agree with how Asian parents like mine teach their children, but that cannot be the reason for constant emotional distance I put up with my immediate family.
Lastly, I do realize that my year as a 23-year-old, just the past one as a 22-year-old, will be a year of more self-discovery and personal change. I promise that all the delicate feelings and major events I will most definitely go through in the near future will be recorded in the confines of this blog. Consistent with its purpose, the blog will continue to provide an open and publicly available forum as I document the rough and difficult path toward fulfilling the resoultions I detailed...
As wishes of happy birthday stream in from Japan and Korea (where it is already the 30th), I am slowly coming to the grip with the fact that I am turning a year older, and one more year closer to fully independent adulthood. Obviously, a few short paragraphs cannot detail all the little things I would like to do to complement my step forward toward that "full adulthood," but I would still like to at least summarize a few general directions I would like to pursue in my "New Year's Resolutions"...
The first has to do with self-confidence. Although over the past years, I have become more and more vocal and more freely like making myself heard in the public, the driving force behind such is often a matter of arrogance and insecurity. It is because I am afraid that I am always forgotten by others and that my importance is underestimated that I speak out. I brag for the sake of some devious, perverted sense of psychological satisfaction, only to exacerbate that innate illusions of grandeur.
Only greater self-confidence can bring about change. Expressing my opinion should become less of activities in attention-grabbing but more of an outward manifestation of who I am as a person. To be truly proud of my identity, it is not simply sufficient to let others know about my character, but to interact more closely with others, listen to what others have to say about me and themselves, and improve who I am based on those interactions. Of course, the interactions will be done without losing that sense of myself.
And speaking of confidently interacting with others hearing the news of others surely make me feel just how behind I am. In particularly, I have been indirectly informed of many high school and college classmates of mine (around the same age), already getting married or at least intimately attached to their significant others. Although my strictly anti-traditionalist views are only compatible with late marriages, I cannot help but respect these equally young acquaintances for being willing and able to confidently shoulder the responsibilities of having a family.
For me, at least, the time has come for a semi-permanent romantic relationship. And London will certainly give me the opportunity to start anew on that front. It would be the ultimate reflection of self-confidence and ability to hold my own in an undoubtedly brilliant crowd that I am sure to face at London School of Economics. Holding steady to my sharp observations of the female population, I hope that good results on that end will allow me to achieve the thing in Europe that I did not achieve in Japan, i.e. the establishment of a permanent career.
Furthermore, as I go about finding that love and career of my life, I do also realize that my relationship with my family does need a complete revamp. In some ways, my inability to communicate effectively with my own family is an underlying cause of my lack of self-confidence, and being able to communicate well at home is directly related to ability to interact with strangers. Sure, I do not agree with how Asian parents like mine teach their children, but that cannot be the reason for constant emotional distance I put up with my immediate family.
Lastly, I do realize that my year as a 23-year-old, just the past one as a 22-year-old, will be a year of more self-discovery and personal change. I promise that all the delicate feelings and major events I will most definitely go through in the near future will be recorded in the confines of this blog. Consistent with its purpose, the blog will continue to provide an open and publicly available forum as I document the rough and difficult path toward fulfilling the resoultions I detailed...
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