Had a sleepover with my best friends in primary school, Rachel and Teressa, after four years. And just like old times, we played Dead or Alive on the Xbox.
After the countdown, while we were watching some Korean music awards ceremony on the big screen, Rachel pointed out to us that the girl on stage was our age. Imagine being seventeen and receiving a prize on an awards show that's being shown all over Asia; imagine being seventeen and singing to a crowd of thousands.
We talked about dreams. Teressa's talent lies in drawing. My passion lies in writing. It's quite a sad passion - it's quiet, lonely, there's none of that glitzy glamour and all the fun only goes on in your head while you're actually alone in a room, trying to evoke emotions. Unfortunately for me, it's what I have a passion for - I can't abandon it.
I believe that a passion or talent is a gift from God, or fate. And with a gift like this, it's only right to use your gift to give. Use it to speak into others' lives; contribute to the beauty of the world. Not doing so is taking what you've been given and hiding it in a hole, keeping it to yourself.
We were given our specific talents and passions for a reason. The world is huge; you're just one person. Individual success is nothing - your achievements and success matter only to yourself if you don't use your blessings to bless others.
What's the use of being a scholar, with all that knowledge inside you, if you don't share your knowledge or come up with something new to better the lives of other people?
Service that day was about dreams too, how apt. I realised my stated aspiration was pretty vague. I want to write. Write what? I don't know - I just want to write.
I'm starting to think that isn't true. I don't want to write about factual things. Preferably not about news. I want to write in a way that I'm able to touch people. I want people to feel like they can relate to my life. I want them to feel like I'm their friend, to realise we're similar in some way or other. I want to help people in a personal way.
When I read, I feel like I'm being taken to a different world. I want to be able to do that to others - before making them realise that my world and theirs aren't that different. That I've been through what they're going through, and I understand. It might help when you see that everything you're feeling intensely, personally, is on print right in front of you - someone else knows how you're feeling right now; she's written about it. And then you feel less of an alien. You aren't alone in your world of intense emotions.
We go through different experiences, but feelings are universal.
Love. Hurt. Brokenness. Joy. We've all felt it.
It's all the same really.
I ended my first day of the first year of a new decade with page one of the daily devotions book 7yee gave me. Coincidentally enough, it was about dreams, too.
Abram was told by God that he would have descendants as numerous as the stars - uncountable. He waited, what, twenty-five years for his child, Isaac, and by then he was a hundred years old.
Have faith. Have faith in your dream, have faith in what you feel you're destined to do - but don't forget the original reason behind that dream. In thirty years' time, if I'm writing without the eventual goal of drawing people to my experiences to help them, then I'd have lost the original reason behind my dream to write.
Matthew 11:1
Faith assures us of the things we expect and convinces us of the things we cannot see.
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