note to myself

this is an excerpt from a column
written by ST journalist Warren Fernandez entitled 'Stayer, quitter,
dreamer, planner - which will it be?'. It was first published in ST on 31 Aug
02 and is contained in his book 'Thinking Allowed?', a copy of which I
bought over the weekend. Some essays, like this one, make for good
reading:



'But talk is cheap. The question is whether young Singaporeans wil be
able to seize the day and make it happen. In the end, it is really up
to them, the choices they make and the actions they take.



Don't like your job? Change it. Unhappy about the long hours at work?
Change or work around it. Want to do more with your leisure than just
watch movies and play golf? Go ahead and do so. Nobody says it will be
easy. But I simply cannot buy the view that Singaporeans are mindless
players blown about by circumstance.


Will young Singaporeans take up this challenge? ... [Or] will they
argue that it was some external ideology, the system, peer pressure, or
the government, that compelled them to do as they did not want to do,
think as they did not want to think or feel as they did not want to
feel? Will they lament that nothing would ever change in Singapore, or
say that making the change was up to the government, or that they were
too afraid to 'fight for what they believe in'?



That, to me, would be the ultimate sign of 'quitting', intellectually,
emotionally and psychologically, even if they stayed physically in
Singapore. What is worse, they would have quit not just on Singapore,
but themselves, and even on life itself. That would be the pity of it
all. For whether you are in New York or Newton, Boston or Bedok, London
or Leng Kee, life is what you make of it.



To my mind, the significance of Mr Goh's 'stayers versus quitters'
challenge was thus to ask a younger generation if they would rise or
shirk from the task of remaking the country in ways they say they want,
and make it work and thrive, as their forefathers had done. Would they
stay the course and pursue the dream even when the inevitable setbacks
arise, or would they quit and simply say it was all someone else's
fault, someone else's responsibility?'



am I a 'quitter'? I think so. Will I continue to be one? I don't know. I really don't.