Moving to Jakarta Part 5: An Ode to Hope
And why I think it’s the most important thing in our lives.
A couple days ago, the world celebrated the Lunar New Year. Many LNY traditions, such as hanging red paper ornaments on doors and giving angpao, revolve around ushering in a new year of luck and prosperity.
While I personally don’t celebrate LNY specifically, one thing I try to do every (solar) new year is to make resolutions. Nothing fancy, just jotting down a few quick goals over a nice hot cup of tea. Actually, this year the wife and I did this together, brainstorming and sharing our resolutions over a cozy dinner at one of our favorite restaurants in California.
But the reality is: as quickly as new year’s resolutions are created, they are often forgotten. Do you remember what your 2023 resolutions were? Is it even important to remember them?
Ralph Waldo Emerson, a philosopher who led the American Transcendentalist movement (a belief that self-reliance, connection with nature, and being in the moment are the best ways to live) once famously said “it’s not the destination, it’s the journey.” Of course, he’s not the only wise person to have said this: many others such as Aristotle, Confucius, and Marcus Aurelius all have their own versions of this ideology. As I reflect on my life so far, I find myself really agreeing with them.
A quick story. When I was 13, during the summer break before starting high school, I decided that I wanted to make it onto my school’s golf team. The thing was — I grew up playing soccer, and while I had swung a golf club a few times before, I was still a total beginner. I only had a few months to learn the game and earn a spot during try-outs, while my competitors had been playing the sport since they were barely walking. Still, with the odds stacked against me, I jumped into this new challenge with fierce determination.
Luckily, my dad was very supportive of my mission. He had been playing golf for 10 years at that point, and he eagerly coached me during our practice sessions. Slowly but surely, I progressed from barely making contact with the ball, to getting the ball in the air, to being able to actually aim the ball at the right target. When I was done practicing at the driving range, I would go home and putt on the mat that my dad had bought me. Rinse and repeat, almost daily. I spent so much time thinking about golf that sometimes I even dreamt about it.
After several months of this routine, it was finally time for try-outs. It all came down to just one afternoon; would all of my hard work pay off, or would it all be for nothing?
After a series of drills and scrimmages, the results were out: I had made it! It was close, too — I was the second-to-last player to earn a spot — but I was thrilled to just be a part of the team.
At that point, I considered this achievement to be one of the proudest moments of my life thus far . I had set a lofty goal for myself and gave it all I had, win or lose. I had earned this for myself.
But after just a few days, the initial excitement faded and I was already worrying about the next set of worries. How to win my next match, what skills to add to my arsenal, how to improve faster.
I’m sure many of us have experiences just like this: strive so hard to achieve an outcome, only for it to seem so small in our rearview mirror once it’s done. Simply put, I took my achievement for granted. And unfortunately, this is just one of multiple ‘destinations’ in my life that saw its meaning fading away over time. But you know what has never faded, to this day?
The feeling of pride, knowing that I pushed myself and achieved something highly unlikely. The work ethic that was forged during the long hours of practice. And the cherished memories I still have of being at the driving range with my dad, hitting ball after ball into that starry night sky, excitedly discussing with him why I mishit that last shot and what I should try to fix next time. To this day, golf is a wonderful shared hobby between me and my dad — despite life’s ups and downs, when we play together, in those few hours, nothing else matters.
So what do resolutions and journeys have in common?
Another quote, this time from one of my favorite authors Mark Manson: “the opposite of happiness is hopelessness.” Without hopes and dreams — beliefs that the future contains something awesome — it is impossible to hold onto happiness for very long at all. The heart of someone who just found out they have cancer is vastly different from that of someone who just found out there’s a cure, despite both being in the same doctor’s office dealing with the same disease. Even something as simple as the dread of going back to work on Monday can stain an otherwise beautiful Sunday, but the student who remembers that tomorrow is a school holiday is the happiest kid on earth. The opposite of happiness is hopelessness, and by extension, happiness is the presence of hope.
Resolutions are commitments while journeys are actions, but the key to both is the same: hopes and dreams of achieving something great in the future.
To live is to dream. Sometimes it’s easier to not dream, to just stay in our comfort zones. Self-sabotage, because we don’t believe we deserve what we dream of, is actually very common amongst even the most confident of us. There’s anxiety whether we are good enough. But having big dreams, and striving towards them with passion and optimism, is what I believe life is all about.
I came to Jakarta in pursuit of my own hopes and dreams. I hope to learn all about my wife’s culture, and figure out a way to be truly comfortable and confident in this place that she calls home. I hope to find career success in this whole new part of the world, so that I can calm the anxious voice in my head and tell myself that I can make it anywhere. And I hope to become a more compassionate and resilient man, having had encounters with so many people whose lives, cultures, ways of thinking differ dramatically from anything I’ve seen before, and finding my own humanity within that.
Just by having hopes and dreams, I am creating more ‘school holidays’ and taking away ‘dreadful Sundays’. When every day is seen as an opportunity to grow in exactly the way we want, or as a step closer to achieving our dreams, how can we not feel empowered and excited for what the future holds? What if the most important thing about setting new years’ resolutions isn’t actually remembering and achieving them, but rather keeping our dreams alive and practicing the habit of listening to our inner hopes?
I want to encourage all of us to take this to heart: that hope is happiness. Instead of seeking small, pointless pleasures, perhaps we can all set healthy resolutions, undertake difficult journeys, and pursue big dreams because that is what gives life its vibrancy. And who knows, maybe we’ll even achieve those big dreams after all!
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