To the people who I most liked & respected the most during my stay in Singapore.
Who supported & encouraged me to follow my dreams to the States.
Thank you sincerely.
And sorry to disappoint you because
“I’m going back to Korea.”
I’ve always wanted to be like Luffy from One Piece. Never succumbing to reality. Always striving to achieve his dream.
I always wanted to be very innocent & optimistic. Never wanting to grow up.
To me, the dream was like the sky. The sky was ever so pure, clean, and sparkling with lights. The ideal world. The world I wanted to reach.
And the earth seemed to be so opposite, the reality was too harsh. It was pitch dark in the morning when I left the house, the stars at the sky were my friends me as I was on my way to school. And the same stars would console me for all the difficulties I had that day.
I just couldn’t stop looking at the sky.
However, from time to time, the heavyweight of reality would press me down. Demanding to look at earth.
I’ve always resisted that force.
But slowly it dawned on me. “Whether I like this world or not, I always have my feet set on this world.”
The other world called the sky, no matter how ideal it may be, it doesn’t exist.
Sky is an ideal but nominal world. Earth is real and actual world.
So try to learn to live into this world. Focus your attention to here and now.
So what happened? I got a really good offer from Murex Korea. The salary was much higher than our average fellow MITB graduates’ yearly salary of SGD57,000(bonus included). Mine is like 57 flipped
And I said yes.
In America I had nothing. But the usual me would still have gone for America.
I am a fan of the poem ‘the road not take’ by Robert Frost.
“
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
“
When 99% would have made the decision of Murex Korea, I’ve always wanted to be that 1% that would act differently.
However, choosing to be different requires a lot of energy.
This time though, I was running on fumes. I was barely holding on.
I was lacking a lot of love I used to have. I’m going back home to heal.
So this is it.
My first part of journey ends here. It was a very good journey.
It started off from my school exchange to France, then learning Mandarin in Taiwan, then my first foreign internship in Vietnam, then working for Honda in Japan, and finally to Singapore to do my masters.
Who would have ever imagined a young frightened child boarding Air France in 2015 would go through all of this in 6 years.
Some day, after having all healed and so on. I shall start my second part of journey. On my flight to New York, I shall message to you again.
It is my wish to focus on earth and keep on glimpsing the sky.
My hopes and dreams will go on.
