An excerpt from one of my assignments. Hope it makes good reading:
“As I am writing this, I am forced to rethink and realize how I was looking at my future life through the lens of a telescope. With a telescope, the lens is small and the view is narrow. When people place their eye on the scope and focus on the scene before them, the view of their surroundings fades and eventually disappears.
Having a narrow view on life is not the problem because we eventually have to cast our eye on a singular point in life and work towards the fulfillment of our ambitions and ideals. The problem I think comes when we unknowingly follow our peers and point our telescopes towards what they are looking for in life rather than make a well thought out decision to pursue the one thing in life that makes us happy. When people do not take sufficient time off to think about their ideals in life, they sometimes choose to adopt other people’s decision to wholeheartedly pursue wealth and by doing so, they live out the life and dreams of another person. Although there is nothing fundamentally wrong with earning money or owning it, the main issue lies with the fact that when people look through their telescopes and take a long term view of wanting to become wealthy, they often base their opinions of success on the amount of money they earn relative to their friends. When a person’s view of success is based on the material quality of lifestyle, we tend to become less appreciative of the intangibles in life. Whenever intangibles such as social relationships, social action and responsibility, human dignity and integrity are not held in higher regard than wealth, people become lost in their self-interest and society suffers.
3 months in the NOC program and I am forced to put down the telescopic view of my life. My life is at a standstill, I have taken a step back and with my own naked eye I see more of the world around me. I could now see the opportunities that exist around me as well as the risks and pitfalls, which come with each opportunity. As I meet more and more successful entrepreneurs, I gradually come to the realization that the value of becoming an entrepreneur only lies partially on the success of their enterprise. The other part lies in the strength of will and courage required to prosper a venture from its infancy to maturity. Each person’s experience reads like a storybook and each story ends in its own unique way, some are simple while others are spectacular, some end in success while others in failure. Nonetheless, each one of them carries a lesson worthy of learning by anyone who is willing to listen.”
