The Art of Dream Big
“My parents say starting something have been 50% of doing the whole process”
Since I was a child, all I did was arguing with my mom to get something I want or to be allowed on doing what I am willing to do, nothing bad about it, it is super casual for a young girl to get a lot of limitation for doing a lot of thing in my places and I am just not that type of daughter who would not question everything I received. Yes, patriarchy culture has always been a custom here. I am not blaming anyone for this, not I until I was educated enough to accept the whole concept of living in diversity and brave enough to speak up about it here.
I was just 8 years old when I first started to join a competition back then, and then, it was 9 years old when I started joining the competition for the Science Olympiad, it was not parents set up, I mean it was not a competition that my parent would register me without telling me in advance because in our society parents is not play an important role in formal education, so that was 100% my school set up for me to join all the competition. Here, what I found privilege about myself, is that my family does helping me a lot to prepare for the competition, making me a text for the speech contest, listening and giving feedback to my performance, my older sisters would helping me getting as much as possible the Olympiad questions and my dad would buy me milk and bread for the night snack. By that, I was able to win several competitions I joined and brought home some trophies. But you know what? it was not until I feel old enough to think, that I am damn privilege for getting so much love, so much attention and so much lesson from the love they have been pouring me until today. It has always been mental support what is matters.
Pulling back the story when I was a young teenager, it was time for everyone in my age to decide what kind of path we will choose after high school, it was pursuing a bachelor’s degree for me for sure. It was nothing serious, but there was more untold story of people in my age, some of them are trying to get higher education but having nothing that can support them. Some others might only be following their friends but having no clear goals on doing things they are doing, this is why you might find some students clueless about their major or their study. But you know what, the fact that life keeps on moving and does depends on your luck making the table sometimes turn 180 degrees when people you think would fail on their life turn out living such a sophisticated life you have also been wanted. Yes, this phenomenon proves that life is all about the process, there is no certain measurement on when you should start something or when you should give up on pursuing things. At the end of the day, that is often only lying on one decision we took for beginning something or start changing things that stop us from growing.
The problem in my society is that we often create a boundary to stop us from achieving higher education, higher economic level, or higher living standard, we often easily giving up and put the culture and conditions to blame. If we put together all the puzzles from the patriarchy culture, this laid-back mentality, or most common problem “lacking awareness to learn new things” have been the major reason why there is only such a slow improvement in my society until today.
The parenthood culture in my country has been one of the most crucial factors, the lack of psychology connection and family education reflect on how seldom you can see a grown woman and man showing their affection to their parent both physically and emotionally have a result on often the feeling of not being supported fully to begin an extraordinary journey of their life. The support that is needed by a person to finally STEP UP to pursue a higher quality of life and making their parents proud of what they can come up with. This inner motivation to make a better living for the people we love is always the great driven to make people waking up after failure, and they would not stop making progress even if things seem super complicated. This kind of change can be made if parents could be more open with their child, the parent would involve their child as early as possible for decision making, being vulnerable in telling the concern or problem inside the family. Motivating and supporting kids on what they are doing, instead of stopping a kid from doing something, try to communicate with kids on the reason why you don’t agree on something they would like to do or have, helping them to craft a big dream and plan their future, sharing more stories and having a deep conversation about what your kid is up to, or what kind of problem they are going through regularly. This type of interaction could slowly bring confidence to your kid as I was experienced and slowly but sure you can have this kid with a strong mentality to start her/his journey ahead.
As a child who is raised in a small village and mid-class society, I am lucky to get these kinds of treatment from my parent, who always support my personal growth, compliment me for what I have achieved, and giving me such wonderful feedback on comment every time I took a not so good decision, we went through a lot of discussions, fight, arguments and debate the last 20 years I am living my life, but I have never been so grateful before to realize that they are the people who make me who I am today. I was attending an elementary school near my hometown, then going to a better town to having the first touch to international school standard for my middle-high school, went to such a wonderful fully funded program i high-school and then pursuing my bachelor in International standard campus close to my country capital. This whole formal education does contribute so much in helping me become who I am today, but this is only because of how my parent have been treating me all the time.
This whole process I’ve been going through is never gonna be the life I am living without the help of my parent who keeps motivating me to dream big and do big. They never really treat me for what gender I am born with, they don’t limit me from doing something I know exactly the output and purpose is, they would stop me from doing something unnecessary and they keep me in check every time I feel down or demotivated. This helps me so much in growing the sense of responsibility, developing my critical thinking, gaining my confidence, and stimulate my self-awareness for my personal growth.
To create a change in our society, it should always be started by building this healthy environment for a kid to grow, making them confident to dream big and supporting them to do big for their life. Because when there is this mentality of not afraid of falling, there will be more chances for people to start something, to begin something that would be big in the future, and finally making such great progress for the living quality in our society.
