It may be a sign of getting older, but I have been feeling restless about topics that irked me and these have been having an active hold on my thoughts more frequently the past few months.
What am I talking about?
Topics that you feel strongly for, those that have left an impression on you and stuck with you throughout your adulthood, that were enhanced further with added exposure and knowledge increase. Thus these make these ideas and thoughts form and grow over time, some of which may even become more solidified and evoke a higher sense of urgency to you personally.
Like a grain of sand in an oyster, these thoughts still ‘irritate’ me, due to the fact that so little progress is made, and it’s no wonder that I keep writing on these topics over and over again, like a broken record replaying the same song. It’s because I have yet to find a resolution for it.
No pearl has yet to be formed in my oyster.
What bothers me the most is I have so little influence and power to do actual change on these issues in the grand scheme of things, to even make a dent on it is itself almost deemed a miracle.
Still, I will choose to persist.
I will use what I have in my capacity to perhaps bring across at least the overarching message on these causes. To bring more attention to these topics and maybe influence others to rally towards them.
Like being a salesman or saleswoman for a product or system that you actually fully believe in yourself, that you believe is important and 100% beneficial to your clients, would this make it easier to pitch the idea of the product and convince your customers to ‘purchase’ it?
What weighs on my heart and thoughts you may ask?
Refer to the below list:
- Climate change and environmental pollution.
- Child Poverty and Mortality
- Financial Literacy and Financial Independence
- Women’s Rights and Empowerment
There is an inter-relation of some of the above topics to each other, I will explain how further into this article.
Another reason why I am pursuing to be financially independent, other than for long-term financial security for myself and my family, is so that I can offer the resource of time and money to pursue these topics on a more practical level.
Take for example below.
One of the basic goals I’ve thought of this last year is to open up a free community library in a low-income area of the town I live in, and bring up basic skills of reading and writing literacy for the children of the communities there. A safe space for children to go to after school to read as many books as they like and do schoolwork, with full-time staff and adult supervision in these places. Tables and chairs for studying, maybe a basic serving of hot drinks, with educational and motivational posters lining the walls. Even the parents of these kids are welcome to come in to read and spend time with their children.
The idea is with a basic increase in literacy and educational standards in these communities, these families may potentially upgrade their lives and especially their children’s lives, and be less prone to stop schooling and becoming a statistic of teenage delinquency but instead make progress towards improving their outcomes.
Another important reason is that with better education in our society, it will tend to lead to a higher rate of problem-solving abilities that can be used for making an impact towards these key topics of climate change, reducing child poverty, supporting women empowerment (by having educated daughters who do not have to only rely on their husbands), and also increase financial literacy and avoiding from being trapped in financial mistakes.
For this, I need the monetary resources not only to open it but to keep it staffed, operational and running long term. Hence, financial independence is important, so that I can have the option and means of making this a reality.
The gist of this post is that most likely all of us will have a topic that weighs down on our hearts, or we have to figure out what matters to us over the years.
Life is not only about the day-to-day tasks, the things we do daily need to eventually add up to or lead to a goal. If you are like me, as I grew into my twenties and thirties, things that clicked with me stayed put and made a small nest in my heart, topics like the above for example. The thing is, it never went away, and most likely I will carry a torch for these topics way into the rest of my adulthood. Some of them, like women empowerment topics, became a larger cause to me as I become a mother myself in my late twenties.
Of course, the major chunk of my personal thoughts are still occupied by family, kids, and work and these actively occupy my mind daily, as they should, and make no mistake these important ‘objects’ are at the center of my heart. But the other topics mentioned above still hover around with me frequently and ‘bothers’ me every time I think about, or am reminded about it when I see and hear things around me daily, be it social media, news, or observations of daily society in the area I live in.
On the other hand, maybe it’s a skill you wanted to learn or a trip you want to take, or even a job you wanted to try out for, it can be many things.
So, how do you deal with it?
These thoughts most likely won’t go away, so you have better think of a plan of what you will do about it instead of waiting. Maybe, for some of you, you may have to think of how you can bring yourselves to achieve a state of being in life where you can actually have some impact or influence on it.
Let that motivate you.