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Grand Delusions


"I want to go into supply chain. Work for the next two years. Apply for a Masters in Germany and work there. Probably get married slightly after that." 

Like Mao, so was my grand 5 year plan. Though, on one of my rare strolls, I peered at this plan more closely. Where did it come from? 2 years ago, sitting in an office was an anathema to me. Formal long sleeve shirts were the last thing I wanted to wear and the fatigued, emotionless smartphone addicted employee returning to his home the last thing I wanted to look like. As I left my part time work today, after hours tidying up slides according to the liking of my boss who, despite my insistence, still stuck to his concept of cramming words onto the slides, I felt like them, tired. (Just during lunch earlier, I had come across a young entrepreneur, who smiling with a cigarette between his fingers, complained how one was always too tired to do anything by the time one reached home. A uniquely Singaporean experience, he had said.)

What changed in those 2 years? For one, I stopped believing in making passion a full time pursuit. I felt that it was only the rare few who knew their passion was, even fewer who found it and a handful who had the courage to follow it. The grand majority failed to even reach the first stage. Faced with the harsh realities of life, a passion that could not afford one to look after the parents in their old age or send their children to university, was morally not something worth pursuing. One had to compromise and hope for a career that would give enough time to pursue one's passion outside of work. In this way, one would become neither too dis-spirited by work nor too engrossed in the pursuit of a poorly paying passion.

And for a moment, I wondered, what if I had no such responsibilities, no such human attachments to make me stay grounded, what would I do? Certainly not supply chain. Certainly not a masters in it. Perhaps not even marriage (does not make sense to let go of one responsibility for another). Which means the grand 5 year plan was never mine.

Dangerous thoughts to harbour... 

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