The life expectancy we have in Singapore is probably around 80 years old. By then, irregardless of what happen during the course of our life, we probably have to bid farewell to our tiny little earth when time is up. Because of this, many people are advocating us to live life each day to the fullest and at the same time to embrace happiness in everything we do. But it's only as easy as it sounds. In reality, not many people can go out there to experiment new things and live their dreams, especially not if you are in a country like Singapore where one small mistake you make and your dreams can be dashed.
I remembered when I had to choose those courses during my secondary school days to go into - Science or Humanities stream and I ended up choosing combined Science and Humanities in order to have both pathways still open at that time for my future. I thought it was an early decision that you have to already make when you are only probably 13-14 years old. As often, if one doesn't know what to do, then the most natural choice would be the Science stream, which is for obvious reason that the future is brighter being a doctor. This is probably the reason why it is only until recently that liberal arts are starting to be more visible in our little island.
In our ideal lives, we like to travel around, experiment new things and make mistakes. But often, we pause a moment, think twice and then back off from our ideas. This is because we are afraid to take risks that will jeopardize our chances. We always go for the safe route in everything we do. Take a graduate for example, we tend to choose to work for others instead of going the entrepreneurship route, where the risk is potentially higher. Boring boring Mourinho chants for those who are more familiar with soccer terminology.
The idea of experimenting and making mistakes still goes a long way before we see more of our society shapes up to embrace the change. Even for our financial planning, most of us tends to go for defensive dividend yield stocks instead of cyclical growth stocks to begin with and historical data trends with this. Maybe this is human nature or maybe this is just us...living in this society.
