Some 30 years ago, I made myself a promise, - I will never again look at my self as just another failure. I then have a good paying job that allowed me to enjoy the perks of being a professional, but there was one draw back. I have to scratch other people back, laugh at their tasteless and corny jokes, and do reports that do not really reflect the type of work that are being done in the field. That was the easy, the harder part was dragging yourself to work every day with people you do not want to be with, and doing the type of work you never did learn to enjoy. Getting promoted proved stressful, and being transferred to a different department away from my usual friends, was took its toll on me and I thought of leaving. That started it all. I changed gear and into a world I have long been with since my childhood days - the buying and selling business.
Find a work you truly enjoy and you never have to work for the rest of your life - that's how the Chinese proverb goes. Be your own boss. We did good the first 2 years, but a fire razed our store to the ground. We did managed to recover our loss ground, but some other screw ups caused us to lose everything we've worked for and its been uphill eversince. With 5 kids to send through college, we spend more than we earned at times, and debts mounted neck deep, so we lagged behind. Failure is what some people regard us, but we never really stopped trying. Our 16 hour a day work routine, 365 day a year effort, somehow carried us to meet our needs but not enough to rise above water. We just take one day at a time, pray and hope for patience like Job, and hang on to our faith that only a few more years to go, we'll be able to go up the easy street. Life may be hard but did managed to squeeze in some fun and laughter as we go through our days.
Everyday, as the sun rises on its horizon, is a sign that it is never too late to forget how you screw up in the past and make a brand new start. The good thing about the future is that it comes comes one day at a time, and though we do not enjoy the same perks other people have in life, each one of us is measured by how much we fill our life with what is given to us. Life is but a tapestry, each one of us a thread, that holds the tapestry together to create a grand design. Some believe that we are the master of our fate, while others believe that everything is pre-arranged and no matter how hard we struggle we are fated to fulfill a destiny. But its more fun to take your chances once in a while and watch how the chips fall to where it may.
Think yourself lucky ! You cannot regarded as a failure if you haven't stopped trying. As Muhammad Ali use to say - " There's nothing wrong with getting knocked down, its staying down that's wrong !" That's why our life is divided into days. We sleep at the day's end, at times even having some dreams whose meaning are hard to interpret, and wake up to a new sunrise in the morning. What's done is done, and no matter how hard we try we could no longer take back the bad things we have said but we could correct or atone for the wrong things we've done. So we just have to fill in for the new day, maybe not enough to cover up for what we lost in the past days but good enough to have a fresh new start ...
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