The Key To Extraordinary: Time
My best friend has been stressed recently about university applications. “I’m about to get rejected to this — and that university”, he babbles as he points at the mountain of essays to submit. I stare blatantly without a reply until he asks me, “So, what do you want to be in the future?”.
I shrug and reply arrogantly, “I want to be successful”
Without second thought, I add, “and success has many factors. Let’s say you want to be a doctor. You need to get good grades, get into your program, make it to med school, study for 10000 hour(s) — but you get the point”. I continue, “Now, that’s your dream. I define success as happiness, long-term happiness in any career I decide to pursue.
Here’s the thing. Although you call me intelligent, I digress. Instead, I find myself in the loophole of questions and worries — causing me anxiety, just like you (I’m just secretly emotional). There’s one thing I know for sure: I’m ordinary, but I want to be extraordinary. So what is the difference?
It’s the word “extra”, so you need to put in that extra hard work, study those extra hours, put in that extra care on the details. If you do that, I promise you that you’ll make it far in life.
Now for all that extra time you worry, you do realize that you’re wasting time right? There’s an old saying in Chinese, translated roughly to “Time is money”. The inexorable push of time will not wait for you (and I’m sure you aren’t a time traveler). If you waste five minutes an hour for twelve hours a day, you will have wasted twenty-one thousand and nine-hundred minutes.
In that time, you could be saying an “I love you” (even if it’s the last), playing baseball with your brother (because you may never know when he’s going to grow up), do scientific research (to win that Nobel Prize in the future), however there’s one thing I know — your possibilities are endless. Chase your dreams, pursue your passions, and don’t be afraid — because after all, you’re extra-ordinary right?
And he said, “You’re right, I’ll keep that in mind. Before it’s too late and we part ways for university, I want to tell you something.”
“I love you”
❤
