Memoirs of an Amnesiac

"I don't need to get high grades. I only need to pass in order to go to the next level," so says one student whom I asked about his performance in school. This got me thinking. Gone were the days when our teachers and even our parents would tell us, "If you won't study hard, you'll end up a janitor." Well, I have nothing against janitors and maintenance personnel. I consider their jobs noble. It just so happened that our parents often dissuaded us into doing things that led to slackness in one's studies. In our young minds, doing menial tasks as sweeping the corridors and cleaning CRs were a drudgery. So we burn midnight candles just to pass our levels with flying colors. Or so my brother and I were raised up this way.

Times have changed indeed. Gone were the days when parents and even teachers would push us into achieving beyond what we can because the possibilities of us gaining more achievements are as endless as our potentials. We lost the ability to dream, to wake up and to pursue it (no matter how impossible).

It would be small wonder that the next generation of leaders would be a generation marked by mediocrity. We ourselves lost the zest to keep improving, to be better today than we were yesterday. In our minds, one single accomplishment is like the end-all and a dead end, without exploring the many possibilities it can be improved and innovated. Whenever that little voice in our heads tells us that it is not yet the end and that something can still be done to fully enhance and develop it, we shun the little voice and we actually console ourselves, "Others are not doing their best. Why should I?"

"Aim for the moon. At least if you fall, you will still land among the stars." This is one quote I truly live by. I hate settling for less. This way I know I accomplish far better than what I conceived in the first place. I do get to slack sometimes but I constantly remind myself about what consequences lay for my slackness. Am I willing to risk being a laggard to that sense of standard I wanted so much to achieve?

The possibilities to achieve more are greater and wider than the horizons we see, if we only train ourselves not to settle for less.

Many accounts have been told about scientists who never gave up on trying until they reached their own successes. If it weren't for Thomas Alba Edison and his many attempts at inventing the light bulb, we would not have experienced the first few ancestors of the fluorescent lamp. Our great thanks are due to Leonardo the Vinci for drafting the first prototype of the airplane which the Wright brothers flew. Success, in this case, does not involve just sheer luck but a sense of persistence, of constantly reaching for the moon, even when the landing was always the stars.

The Japanese clearly illustrated this through the term "kaizen" which means continuous improvement. As a nation, I think this is what we all need -- the culture to keep improving, unceasingly, and not settling for less. To be a critic of one's accomplishments. To push oneself further and harder. To constantly give of oneself more than what is expected.

With this view in mind, it is no longer difficult to tell students to aim for the moon. Come to think of it, stars by themselves are even farther.