On Hope and Fears

I hope

For money, fame and fortune,

I hope

To be happy plus a portion,

I hope

That I will find success,

I hope 

With that comes ample rest;

but

I fear

For reasons quite unknown,

I fear

The dark, it chills the bone,

I fear

My thoughts and misery,

I fear

That I might fail miserably.

Continuing my series on success, I wish to address the very pertinent qualities of hope and the exasperations caused by fear. My previous posts dealt with the nature of success: never-ending, transient and that the very definition of success is the sustainment of dreams and aspirations. I also emphasized the need for inspiring and motivating others, suggesting that in so doing we perpetuate our passions and affections for one another.

I hope to encapsulate the universal seesaw of hoping and fearing in a little anecdote featuring myself, but I fear that I will speak for others. So, I guess I just want to share my hopes and fears leading up to my Southeast Asian trip and how I have successfully balanced the two.

I hope to show how I suppress and eventually eliminate my fears by constantly hoping to reassess and refocus my goals. I hope to show that hoping fills us not with blind optimism; rather, it instills us with courage and purpose. Hope allows us to create our own destinies and to not settle for anything less.

Yes, we fear many things. We are scared of change, uncertainty and risk. We are afraid of challenges and the losses that we might incur. We are timid because of our past failures and miscalculations. I am a victim of some episodes in my past which has haunted me through long, dark nights. However, I have emerged from those dreary times because my fears serve as mere indicators of new avenues and opportunity. When I fear something, instincts tell me to shirk from the fight and to shy away, but my hope challenges me to meet it head on and to explore it. It is only by exploring and confronting our fears that we can change circumstances and remodel the world for ourselves, for if we don't, nobody else will.

I have high hopes for this trip of mine. I hope to learn from the people I will be meeting. I hope to acquire new perspectives and ideas. I hope to spend time with loved ones and family. I also fear that I will be outperformed in committee; that I will stumble through my words; that I will not impress the people I meet.

I will be observing parliamentary session, caucus & chat up two MPs

A week ago, I wrote to two Members of Parliament from the Opposition in Malaysia. They are two prominent Chinese politicians and I expressed my interest in meeting with them to discuss their platforms and my future viz. my contributions to the Malaysian political system. I am extremely passionate and aware of my roots, and a recent resurgence of identity has pushed me closer and closer to the issues within my homeland. Therefore, I hoped to amplify and refocus my zeal and aspirations by actualizing my vision: that is to converse (informally) with an MP and to observe parliamentary proceedings. They have agreed to sit down and chat with me at the Dewan Rakyat (Parliament building) in Kuala Lumpur on March 9th so stay tuned for that blog post.

I know that this isn't an unheard of thing nor is it an outstanding achievement, but I take comfort in the fact that I saw that window of opportunity and went for it, thus, fueling my hopes and dreams further. I hope that someday I will stand in Parliament and represent my people and I will undertake any efforts necessary for me to do so. How unthinkable it would be for me to shy away from my own passions and from writing my own destiny !

Yet, I am plagued by my fears and the ghost of my over-confidence. In all my high-spirited and lofty ambitions, I am but a student and my means to achieve that end are limited. One does not just say : "I will go back to Malaysia and be a politician"; rather, one reassesses his goals and the ways one will go about achieving it. I must continue to study, contemplate and rationalize my vision. Sometimes, good fears are necessary to make us prudent, but neither am I retreating from my dream nor discarding it our of fear. Instead, I will continue to sustain this motivation and passion in the hopes of someday fulfilling my ambition of reforming Malaysia.

In the process, I hope to gain mastery of my fears. In my fears, I hope to find solace and direction - keys to overcoming the obstacles which separate us from happiness.

"Hope is not blind optimism. It's not ignoring the enormity of the task ahead or the roadblocks that stand in our path. It's not sitting on the sidelines or shirking from a fight. Hope is that thing inside us that insists, despite all evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us if we have the courage to reach for it, and to work for it, and to fight for it. Hope is the belief that destiny will not be written for us, but by us, by the men and women who are not content to settle for the world as it is, who have the courage to remake the world as it should be." 

— Barack Obama