I believe life is a book with hundreds, if not thousands, of very different chapters that don’t fully make sense while reading it forward, but in retrospect everything makes perfect sense and readers comprehend every decision the main character of the story made, why it was made, and the challenges around it.
It’s like that great quote by the late Steve Jobs, “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.”
I take life as this big story with a long-term approach — patiently but working hard on who I want to be in 10, 15, and 30 years. That’s a life plan and might sound excessively far away from now, but focusing on long-term goals allow me to not feel impatient or frustrated to achieve what’s cool now. I do this because I think about my 65-year old self when I might not have as much energy and time as I have now. I think about what would I regret about when I’m laying on a bed barely breathing and able to walk? And I know there are 3–5 major goals I’d regret if I didn’t do them while in my twenties, thirties, forties and even fifties. For instance, learning to be a great programmer, creating and running a profitable business, building a beautiful and healthy family, traveling and living in as many places as possible.
What I’m starting to like about my new life — new because I feel I’m getting a second chance after that almost tragic flight from Asia to the Bay Area earlier this year, is the process of getting to the goals — the journey. I used to care more about the outcome and would rush through the process as fast as possible, but now I understand that everything has its place and time and it’s about the process of getting to the goal that makes life interesting and worth living. In the meantime, I’m a work-in-progress with long-term goals to achieve and making progression everyday.
Richard Chan 