Zooming in

When I was small, when I was in secondary school there's always some elders you will meet in your life who wants to teach you about what life is. They told me how I should be spending my life. They give me an analysis of which career is most suitable. They even told me what my ideal wife should look like and act like.The way they say it, you will feel that these things define your future, that the whole life of yours actually depends on your choices.

But when I grow older, I read more and I think more, I can't really agree to all this anymore. I don't think that our life's meaning depends on these general things. I feel that even if one has a good career, good wife and what people call supposedly "perfect life" you can still live like a zombie without any feeling.

While it's true that what you choose and what you do do define you as a person in whole, I think that we should zoom in further. For all we know, two person can have the same objective and the same way of doing it, maybe even equal ability. But do they gain the same results? I doubt that any two person will be completely equal in anything. Then what's wrong? What creates the difference?

It's the small things that people normally take them as unimportant that makes the difference. It's the small difference in the way you think that cause you to succeed or lose. No matter how you look at the big picture, you will eventually find that it's the small, detailed parts of the picture which make it so wonderful and so fascinating. No matter how good you are, you still need to assemble the basic elements to get the complete set of the thing you want.

It's like during the process of chasing a girl, people normally pay attention to the part where the boy confesses and the girl accepts or maybe the part where the boy flirts with the girl. But every boy flirts with the girl they are chasing, so what's so interesting with it? The part which defines the thing lies in the smallest movement, the simplest dialogue or maybe the basic feeling the boy is giving out to the people around him. Have you ever compare two pairs of couples flirting? Then maybe you will get to notice such small differences. How the tiniest, non-obvious and maybe even without the doer's realization himself or herself make every case unique.

When we continue to grow and learn more, we will eventually leave the level where we are looking at the big picture and learning the steps. We will slowly start to notice the tiniest things in our action. It's just like chess. When you become really good, it's one small difference that change everything in a game. The ones who fail to zoom in will always live in the world which the big picture is everything, and without really going deeper into anything, fail to find the true meaning of their actions. How can a basketball game become really meaningful for a player if he only play the game based on principles of the game? Of course he's going deeper and deeper both in emotional aspect and technical aspect, which will be unique compared to other players although everyone plays the same game.

For me myself, I am currently training hard to improve myself in debating skills. But the more I learn, the more tiny elements begin to pop out. I realize that achieving the basics is one thing, but if I were to evolve to become better and a true debater, I need to really zoom in and deal with those tiny elements. After all, what defines professionalism and uniqueness come from them.

The longer I wait and be patient for something that my heart yearns so much, the better I understand about myself also. I just hope by zooming in, I will be become better and redefine myself in a new light.

Because to really create a change, I need to zoom in. Because that's how I will know what I need to change, what I need to improve and what move I need to take in order to reach my target in the end.