Losing our Sense of Direction

And where do our future lies?

It's empty. And it's not easy to fill the void. You feel it when you have nothing to do. Or perhaps, you feel not likely doing something but you feel you don't want to do nothing too, as if nothing in this world could fill the emptiness void and one alternates being doing something trying to fill the void and doing nothing trying to fill the void. Alas, it's still there. It's barren.

Well at least, one usually can get away from the situation if someone communicates with me (not by text, but at least voice call). Alas, everyone is too busily sucked into their work lives at the very moment one need a call from them.

And What Causes?

Various reasonings! Burnout from work, urges to speak with someone, and other reasons one isn't aware of or doesn't apply to me but applies to you, dear reader.

Though actually, one wants to speak of something else that doesn't relate to the starting paragraphs above. So let's get to

Conclusion

Only who puts the bell can release the bell (解铃人还须系铃人). Do not avoid it with other causes: target its root and you'll feel not empty again.

And Let's Start Over With The Topic One Wishes To Speak About

Still, the emptiness, but this time, it's an uncertainty of the future.

Spoonfeeding is a general dependency of most humans. The rare ones get to get away from spoonfeeding; but most of us stay within. Have you ever try to create your own work? For some, yes, they love startups. For others? Nah, we know we need some capital and we know that most startups failed. If we don't have this really clever ideas and gather a group of people to walk forward together, it's difficult to put thoughts and daydreams into action.

And what about being spoonfeed? That's finding existing work; i.e. working for someone else. Nah, it's not a big problem working for someone else. It's a big problem that, we are working for someone else's aim, someone else's objective and forget about our aim and our objectives. That's the problem.

For a random person nowaday, the younger generations, Gen Y or Gen Z. First, we get to study, study, study. Our teachers tell us what to study. Spoonfeeding. Our teacher tell us how to whoosh the exam. We memorize compositions and apply it to our exam (yeah, plagiarism is not discouraged; someone could write the same composition in the same exam 100 times because they go to the same tuition school memorizing the same compositions; and tuition schools have seen trends from past exams and guessed what questions would likely come up this year, hence ask you to memorize a few compositions to pass the exam). That's primary school.

Secondary school? Still the same thing. Teachers still ask you to do what you should do. GCE O Level is actually a booklet of syllabus determine what you need to know to ace the exam, and nothing would come out outside the syllabus so you don't have to worry about them; as if in the real world situation, everything would go as you plan and you would pass real world problems like solving an O Level Advanced Maths equation: difficult but within expectations. The first thing you go into class, your teachers will start teaching, tell you what to do by giving you homeworks. If your teacher don't tell you what to do, you just don't care about the class, spread everywhere that your teacher asks you to do nothing because he/she didn't say a thing expecting you to take responsibility for yourself.

Always, if we can don't take responsibility for ourselves, we choose not to. If others don't take our responsibility, we blame them. If we are asked to take our responsibility for ourselves, we delegate. As long as there is a party to blame and we don't have to beat ourselves up for making our own mistakes, we'd do that. The fear of failure has been encarved deeply, not in our genes, but in our education system. WE punish students for getting bad marks, such as not allowing them to join (extra) co-curriculum activities (CCA, ECA, clubs and societies); or perhaps we add extra study periods for them if they don't meet our expectations (if you're a teacher or a parent). As for their expectations, sorry man, students/children are just puppet to us. Parents want their children to add faces to them, to beat other parents up. If their children don't get better than other people's children, they don't see any face, and since they cannot beat other parents up, they beat their own children up. As for teachers, being influenced by parents' expectations, plus they want to show that their class is better than other classes, they would work their students to maximum learning period, carving empty biscuits (画大饼) as if they would get rewarded later on. Nah, they just make the students be more care about their exams; and feel empty when there are no more exams as there are no one to make their nose tall: the feeling of extreme pride, a peacock standing in a group of, hmm, humble peacocks? Jealous peacocks? Self-beaten peacocks?

Finally, we get to university. That is, if you ever go to university. Although teacher does tell you what to do, they didn't say it out. From one's experience, especially experiment session. Lectures is just passively absorb like a sponge absorbing water even when it's already "saturated". But experiment like laboratory sessions, they may give a booklet with directions in, but the teacher won't be speaking. And you would go "huh, why the teacher haven't yet come and tell me what to do?" and waste your whole time either speaking with friends, reading books, or just daydreaming around waiting for someone to give you instructions. Emptiness!

And we mentioned work. If you're not starting up with your own aim and objectives, you're working for someone else's aims and objectives. So, it's a matter of what things are being passed to you. Irregardless of whether you're freely available to do what work, or you're being micro-managed; the final goal still aims at their goals.

It's really difficult to say, even if we do our startups, whether we're really not being spoonfeed. After all, competitions is a kind of spoonfeed. We are too obsessed with what our competitors are doing that we want to keep firing at them, at being better than them; so they're "spoonfeeding" us, albeit indirectly, for our direction forward.

And finally, imagine that you'd retired and had nothing to do. What would be a sense of direction, a goal for yourself, to move forward? Retirement goals? Yeah, maybe, but one don't feel good if one isn't going to do something useful for someone else for too long. I don't know...

Conclusion

Spoonfeeding is a widespread disease we acquired today. And how it affects our lives?

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