I was reading Becoming by Michelle Obama, a gift from last Christmas. Her description of riding the city bus to school caught my attention: “There’s no hurrying . . . You get on and you endure.”[1] It sounds a lot like my attitude towards life, except that I am never patient enough to simply “endure.”
I work hard. If I feel passionate about something, I pursue it with every drop of blood in me. But I take scenic routes whenever I can. When I was little, it took me so long to finish my homework that mom had to consult my teachers repeatedly. According to mom, I would write, erase, rewrite, and erase a character until I was happy with how it looked on paper. (I don’t remember doing exactly that.) When I learn something new, it is a MUST for me to know its origin or the fundamentals. After installing a software (or, an app, nowadays), instead of learning the applications, I had to know the parameters—just so I can change things. I took time to gain skills that I considered essential for my work. When some of my friends were getting ready for retirement, I barely started working.
We get on the “life” bus. It moves on its own speed. Sometimes, it moves so fast that we lose control; sometimes, so slow that we wonder when it will move again. There is no way to rush forward or to hold it back.
Equal opportunities: We are all given twenty-four hours a day; we all get to take it one day at a time; and we all can choose how to spend our time. We sit on the bus watching things go by. It is up to each of us to observe, to learn and to enjoy the view. Or, we can always ENDURE.
[1]Michelle Obama, Becoming (New York: Crown, 2018), 57.