Sunday, May 30, 2010

Be Grateful for What You Have Because You Can Always Have Less

Last night after tiring day of apartment cleaning, I did some video walking on youtube. The video was about successful Indonesian people living abroad. The video was broadcast on one of Indonesian TV station last December when I was in Indonesia. I watched this show at that time but only for few minutes since I had a guest at that time. I realized yesterday when I found it in youtube that I had not finished the whole show.
OK, long story shorts, the show was about few guys who left Indonesia and made brilliant career outside. There were one group (I think it was part of PPI) who gathered all of this kind of people from all over the world and they exceed their target from getting 50-80 people to be gathered (or probably contacted and collected their data) 400 people with the criteria. Due to the short time provided for the show, only four people was interviewed.
Those four people interviewed are extremely smart and achieved a remarkable achievement. However, I always put preference on the people who suffered the most compare to other people who suffered less when it comes to comparison. Why? Probably for me the success level of someone is measured from how hard he struggle for success. And people who suffered the most are better than the others.
Among those four the one that I choose was Prof. Ken Soetanto. IMHO, he was outstanding. He is one of the Dean at Waseda University and had four doctoral degrees. He said (at least he didn't denied when the host said) that he did not finished his high school. Later on I found out that he finished his high school but was not on time since his first school was closed and he had to work since then until few years later he start again his high school in another school.
He went to Japan when he was 23 and struggling to live there for three years before he got admitted to Nokodai for bachelor program and continue for master in the same university. And then, this is the best part, he took four doctoral programmes afterwards. He was disappointed because the Japanese at that time did not accept him to be a researcher. He went to US and work there in 1 or 2 universities for around 5 years before he returned to Japan again to be a lecturer. Afterwards, his career was shining than ever.
Amazing stories. The video somehow gave me another point of view to see life. Recently, I was soo ungrateful about almost everything that I have. My story with this people have some similarity. At least I was like them studied overseas and experienced living in abroad. I also most probably shared the same problem to decide to go home for good or not. Have I been as successful as them? No, at least not yet. Knowing there stories makes me think that there are other goals that can be reached beside coming back home and give to do everything, no matter that does not suit my qualification or worse does not fit what I want, just for some money. So, a new set of directions? Yessss....
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