Life is Like Buying that IKEA Furniture
Life is not neuroscience. To simplify a complex equation, have you been to IKEA and buy one of those furniture in a tightly sealed box? And think of that energy to carry it out into your trunk and pull it out right when you reach home, raring to unleash all your energy by unpacking that furniture. And alas, from the periphery, it really is impressive, seemingly a perfect packaging with the detailed printed instructions complementing the inventorized list of screws, nuts and bolts of various sizes.
But once everything is out there on the floor, even a surefire run seems to reach a screeching halt, leaving you scratching your head as you start to grapple with the nitty-gritty of each piece of screw, nuts and bolts. And even when you keep stretching your patience, you just cannot end up with the furniture you wanted to assemble in a whiff. Why? It could be a missing small plank of wood, a mismatched screw, a damaged pre-holed siding or worse, a missing piece could be the very culprit. Such is life. There could be tons and tons of idiot’s guide to success and survive life. You were even born with the support structure in place with your family providing that very foundation. And nothing is lost with the wisdom from your grandparents down to your doting parents who did sweat it out for you to leave the university portals with a bachelor’s degree tucked with you. But once you start testing the waters, browsing the jobsites for jobs jobs jobs, yes finding a job for the sake of finding one shouldn’t be like climbing up Mount Vesuvius.
Count five years down the road, did you realize you were like a butterfly who hopped from one job to another. Or worse, your track record the past five years looks so fragmented wherein there were more months and years you were jobless than at work? Sounds familiar? But such is life. You gotta hit rock bottom. Only then you would realize that “it’s all hands on deck”. Together with your spouse/partner and immediate family, the only way to go is to trudge on, there’s no turning back until you want to raise the white flag.
But what’s the prize? Where’s the prize? Go back to your IKEA experience. Once you get to finally piece together and assemble that big puzzle of a furniture you bought for a hundred bucks, you would enjoy that very moment. And that’s exactly the apex you would reach when you finally enjoy at least a successful milestone in your life.
Now for my personal confession. Indeed we went through these challenges less than ten years ago when in one of our holidays to Singapore, we decided to buy one of those IKEA furnitures and handcarried it back home, whew !
