I always have two visions conflicting with each other. One vision is to build a home for myself, and another vision is to build a future for others.
Vision 1 : Build a shelter that I can call home
Let me paint out this vivid vision for you.
It will be a Saturday afternoon, bathing in the gentle European sun. The air is alive with the symphony or chattering voice, mingling with the lush greenery and meandering canals.
I will sit inside a quaint cafe that forbids the intrusion of laptops. I will take out a book from the depths of my handbag, cradling the familiar weight in my hand. A sip of an oat latte dances on my lips, coaxing for inspiration that I will be conceptualizing in my Midori notebook.
At my side will sit my beloved partner. When our gaze met, I would find our love that runs deep like an ancient river, watering the profound connection that we share. From the pages before us, worlds will unfurl, narratives will come alive, and ideas will take flight. Uncertainty and challenges might await us, but we stand ready to grow and evolve, fortified by the unwavering support we offer one another.
This is my first vision of building a home. After living in the Netherlands for a year, I started to dream of this vision, tasting what is called living. The vision becomes even more vivid after living in 10+ cities in four years, craving for a place where I can shelter myself when I’m consumed by fear and despair. This vision illustrates the financial stability I need to work on and the lifelong companionship I’m still searching for with an alignment of the European value of living rather than working.
Vision 2 : Build a future from an instinct
If my first vision is a colored landscape, my second vision is an abstract art that I don’t even know how to interpret. I will hypothesize on building something futuristic that is beyond human’s current imagination.
Build a school for future education? Get universal healthcare in the middle of Rwanda? Maybe, I don’t know. This vision is really vague because most of the time in my life I don’t have a strong sense of what I like and what impact I want to bring to the world. In my life, I only have a strong sense of who I want and don’t want to be. I sniff like a dog whenever I’m around my role model. They all happen to be unconventional talents, like Anting Liu, who founded Teach for Taiwan, Posiden Ho who dropped out of NTU and founded Outliers; and Maggie Lin, who founded Twin Oaks.
In addition, I certainly noticed that the imagination of the future, for instance, the building of Minerva University, and the 10-year roadmap of Meta, naturally ignites me with excitement.
To be really frank, I much prefer to achieve my Vision 1 than Vision 2. Even though Vision 2 looks magnificent, I don’t want to inhale more hardship in life. I’m not that ambitious. Sadly, I still find a high chance that the universe might want me to be on this path even if I resist.
There are two main reasons. First, I have strong guidance from my instinct. I often achieve things much bigger than I thought I could without planning them intentionally and understanding their consequence. For instance, I didn’t have noble reasons to drop out of NTU after three years and restart my degree at Minerva. It’s simply because I hate NTU and think I deserve a better education with people who share my curiosity and adventurous spirit. If I had known that my family would almost disown me because of this, I would think twice before dropping out.
Second, I do have the ingredients to be impactful. Beyond studying in a futuristic university with tons of experience most people don’t have, naturally, I am attracted and attract people who have strong convictions to make changes in the world. Many of my close friends are “workaholics” with strong beliefs in climate change, education, and technology… I feel very comfortable working with them and guide me through my growth. For instance, I got into Meta wasn’t because I was determined to get a job in Big Tech, just because my friend worked hard with me and I was already on her ride and couldn’t get off her drive.
To summarize, how I make crucial decisions in my life has been nothing more than intuition that is out of my personal control, along with people who dream of being impactful. And damn, even writing this makes me feel so scared of the future arrangement of the universe already.
Another accuse for this universe is this current breakup that shattered my Vision 1 into pieces. Before my breakup, I was so ready to let go of Vision 2 and pursue Vision 1 with my partner. I felt no regret in slowing down my career progress and rest in my life after this 4-year tiring journey. Yet, a few days after I broke up, I suddenly felt struck by lightning when I was walking on Dolores Street. An immediate strong urge hit me to work, build, create, and learn.
Immediately after this realization, I threw away my plan to the Himalayas for yoga teacher training and built a hacker house with friends in three days, feeling unimpressed with the graduation trips people were having. Reluctantly speaking, I mysteriously felt so right about the breakup and opted into this path with all myself. I don’t know why, and I’m scared, but my body moves without my permission, and my instinct has decided to work on Vision 2 a bit more, even though I still have no clue what I want to work on.
I pray the universe grants me an easier life, but I guess I don’t get to choose.
This is the 9th post from my 30-day writing challenges. I was inspired by Tung Nguyen, a friend who is a famous blogger. He overcame the fear of creation through mass-producing blogs and eventually found his own niche audiences.