| I find something new! For those who are getting sick of my "lesson learned" talk, you can stop reading at this point. yes ... i know i am over analyzing, taking small things too seriously, making small things sound real big, whatever you may say, but I want to write it out here, first to organize my thoughts, second to make me remember ...
I went out with a new friend today with to a soccer match, AC Milan vs SH (Shanghai actually won 2 nothing, ha..shocked eh?). Li Li is Jacob's friend who i met over the weekend, friendly...out-going person, quite talkative (yet she claims she isn't so ... haha) with such a character n working opportunities, I would expect she is the type that makes many friends, continuously, no matter where she is. To my surprise, she doesn't want to make new friends ... why?
Casually she said, ... "well, I rather build on what I have, invest time with people who I like, rather than ... meeting new ppl, ... so fa man..etc"
Things start to make sense to me. Some of you may know, I have been making friends and I have a decent number of them ... What are my motives? well, first I don't want ppl to dislike me, so I try to be friendly, second, there is the networking reason which I still feel sketchy about, third, and most importantly... if I don't invest in this potential friend (which I can call acquaintance), how would I know whether we can be good friends?
What these three reasons cause me is that I am constantly troubled by friend problems, and I am finding harder and harder to manage my time ... what is the best way to split my weekend? Is this time to show up? ... what is he/she thinking of me? Etc etc god... guess what? i have enough of this crap ... there are better things to do in life, than constantly trying to be someone, who's likable in everyone's mind ... (if you know how much I learn I lack in the past 4 months, you know what I mean ...)
We all have a capacity ... there is room to expand your capacity, but not much, and it takes long to expand it. So, in the short-run, meaning in your day-to-day activities, don't go over your capacity. Why? simply coz you just can't hold that much, and when you reach your capacity, that means there are trade-offs to everything you do extra.
Being all separated with most of the people I know, I realize who are important to me, who I treat as friends, coz honestly, I have lonely times here and they are the ones I think about. And what have I done in the past 4 months to them? To be honest, not much, ... not enough. To new friends, after I feel that we have passed a certain stage, I see them less ... Initially i thought, oh well, we are good friends, it's okay, ... but that's what I thought to some of my old friends who I no longer talk to ... The bigger I expand my circle, the harder I feel to manage. I realize, I have reached my capacity ... and trade-offs have actually started to occur, in a way that I don't notice until they become very visible. And it's time for a change. Not to imply I will reject new comers, but there will be gradual adjustments to my attitude. This serves a good logic to explain why a lot of people complain me that "cher,... you treat everyone the same, initially I thought I am special to you, but later, i find that, I am just one of "them". It is fun to make new friends, interesting to learn from other, but these excitements shouldn't blur my priorities, or better say, my friends.
This simple silly easy "fact" of capacity serves to answer another question of mine. I want to take too much into myself, I am way too greedy, ... I first said I want this, but later I said I want that too...and at last I said I want all of them. "Well, yea... it's important to be broad, to know many things, ... coz knowledge, to me, is a charm" I can't stress enough how "charming" (may sound kinda gay) a knowledgeable person is. But am I really interested in those subjects? what stock market? tired of not knowing the fu*kin difference between those middle east countries, who doesn't like who? how to be a good speaker? improve in asking questions? communication skills? those European soccer teams? Yeah, to be honest, we shall know all of these, ... things we encounter in life, but I'm frankly tired of realizing what I don't know every time, and even worse, pushing myself to learn something I am not too interested? Yes, you won't know the interesting part of sth, until you spend some time digging into it, the same as what I said, you won't know whether an acquaintance will be a good friend until you invest time to it... So, am I confusing myself here?
In a conference I attended here, I asked a speaker a stupid question which I initially thought was smart... It was a stupid question because of my usual logic to things. I like to think ... like there is a "model" to everything we do. You either do this, or do that; if this doesn't work out, you do sth else, the initial way was wrong, scrap it (stupid logic eh? i know ...) The speaker, a rep from the World Bank, Harvard Uni Prof., said in life we seldom go to the extreme, the truly talented strategy, is to be flexible, and know how to move in between and find the golden mean.
To many things I encounter, I am not finding the mean. I often take things to an extreme; that's because I have the tendency to feel very excited about new ideas that I find special (including this capacity thing...), and I just want to see if I can use them. Finding the mean requires great understanding on yourself and high confidence. A good index is whether I feel comfortable. Have you seen ppl working towards sth with true passion? In my opinion, not only that these ppl find something that they truly like to do, but they also find the right mean in how much to put into it. To tie this with what I said about capacity, a question to think about is whether these people have time or even bother checking things that are not related to their aby? Yes, I think so, but to an extent that trade-offs don occur to hinder their passion. I think this attitude towards different new things ultimately translate to customized results by yourself, and success.
Enough of this bullshit, in conclusion, arthur:
Know your capacity. Find your mean. Live with passion! |
