Life Lessons : Being Good, Being Smart
I will start with a story that I heard and that most children of my age in our community also heard when we were kids.
“Be smart, child, and you will be a doctor someday”
Our parents and grandparents said that phrase all the time. And it started from their intention to make us enthusiastic and diligent in studying. We also heard that phrase in kindergarten when our teachers added a tune to it. In another sense, that phrase might be a message from their life experience that being smart is one of the ways to become what you want. Or in other words, that is their hope.
a new question arises.
why be ‘a doctor’? this is a simple question.
And the simple answer is ‘Useful for others’.
But there is another answer that is more complicated and ambiguous. That is if the answer is:
‘Have benefit, be beneficial’ (some people will interpret it as ‘save life’ or ‘safe live’).
Which answer is better? I will not answer this question because it depends on your perspective. One thing I know and everyone witnessed when covid19 happened. The doctors and paramedics became heroes and not a few died. It gave me an awareness that being a doctor has an enormous risk (*of course all jobs have their own risks, only different levels of risk). why did they dare to take that risk? The reality that they could help other people’s lives while their lives were also at stake. Being a good person is necessary. Thank you doctors and paramedics, you did something incredibly great, you are good people.
I will continue the story.
“You can take a helicopter”.
yepp.. this is the continuation of what I heard before. One day, my mother bought a cassette of children’s songs. When I played the song, there was a song with the same lyrics as what I had heard before, “Be smart, child, and you will be a doctor someday”.
When I grew up, I remembered the song, and what crossed my mind was:
‘who inspired whom?’.
Did our parents and grandparents take the lyrics to make a simple advice for children to understand?. Or on the contrary, did the songwriter get the lyrics because he was inspired by the advice of our parents and grandparents?. And what about the teachers in kindergarten, were they the meeting point of both?
I have a perspective on that phrase. Our parents and grandparents, teachers in kindergarten, and the songwriter, all of them must have had good intentions. ‘Be smart, child, and you will be a doctor someday’, maybe in another sense it means ‘work hard and study diligently to become smart so that you can be what you want and hope you can also be useful for others’. with the addition of the phrase ‘you can take a helicopter’, maybe in another sense it means ‘you can surely achieve what you want, get it with honor, but if you have already got it do not fly too high with arrogance’.
What I wrote is not a fictional story, I hope what I wrote has something valuable in it. If you feel that there is something wrong with my writing and need some corrections. I apologize and welcome any suggestions that you give so that my future writing can be better. Thank you for reading what I have written and shared with you.
