Tuesday, January 1, 2008

In Search of Enrichment

Blame it on the influence of Star Wars where every episode has a theme ranging from “Phantom of the Menace” to “Attack of the Clones” to “Revenge of the Sith”, I could not help but to start thinking of my personal theme for a new calendar year. If 2006 was “A Year of Discovery” whereby I developed a better understanding of life, 2007 was “A Year of Learning and Character Building” laced with plenty of lessons that built on to the realization and discovery in the year before. Having made a discovery, learnt and built character, wanting to further improvise becomes a natural progression. Hence, I’m hoping for 2008 to be “A Year of Enrichment”.

Discovery would have been the unearthing of something new. It was a phase of realization and getting full clarity on what I had wanted. Being a “virgin”, there would have been plenty to learn and as I went through a steep learning curve, it did shaped and built character. Although enrichment would mean continuously learning, the key difference would have been that it would be in search of a deeper understanding for a subject which is already known unlike the initial learning stage where everything is so new.

To paint a clearer picture for the different phases, Discovery would be like going through an orientation prior to signing up for a specific course or subject. Learning would then be like taking the first semester of a course and in this case, the subject is “Living Live 101”. Considering that I have barely scraped through that subject in 2007, I hope to be getting better results as I embark on a new semester whereby I would be taking “Living Life 201”.

Part of the syllabus of the new course would require some application and practical. Along the way, there would be a need to step up the game and to go extreme lengths to apply all that has been taught and learnt. Character building would be further tested; perseverance and ability to crack tough situations would be expected. No longer being a freshman means that the expectations would be much higher as there would be a lower tolerance for mediocrity. Funnily though, the expectations were not set by the lecturer or dean and all these higher expectation to excel is self inflicted.

To start off, I have randomly listed down 50 things to be done in 2008 in search of “Enrichment” and 12 months down the road, I hope to be checking each of these items which are now on my to-do list. Amongst the things that I have set to do as part of “Living Life 201” is to participate in a community service event as well as to initiate a self introduction at functions or events amongst many other things. Giving up smoking or drinking however did not make the cut into the top 50. The list of the 50 things could not be shared due to the “indecent nature” of some of the items but I do hope to be sharing my thoughts and recollection of some of the tasks upon the completion. In the meantime, a Happy New Year to all!

For those who might be keen to have a to-do list of their own as we usher into the New Year but have no idea where to start, there’s plenty of ideas posted on
http://www.todolistblog.com/

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