Dream lover is kind of a great career choice

(The Standard 17 April 2014) Time is a funny thing. Looking forward, it seems like an infinitely long and blank piece of canvas.

 

But looking back, it seems like a collapsed accordion book, and I can only recall brief flashes of moments piled one on top of the other, compressed into barely an inch of Post-it notes.

That is what the past four years of college feels like - short.

Nearing the end of this chapter of my life, I am - like many other graduates - excited to be starting the next chapter of chasing my dreams, without having to be stuck to a class schedule: desperately, optimistically, naively perhaps.

It was unexpected, but certainly pleasant though, for me to have come across writer George Saunders' convocation speech for Syracus University's graduating class from a year ago.

 

Rather than focusing on encouraging students to pursue their dreams and goals, he chose to talk about a different kind of achievement instead - kindness.

 

Even the speaker mentions he doesn't know how to put it in a less corny way, but when he thinks about regrets in life, it's always when he failed on acts of kindness.

Our generation is brought up anxious to succeed. But accomplishments are unreliable, for success is like a mountain that keeps growing as you hike it, and there's the very real danger that succeeding will take up your whole life, while the big questions go untended.

The big question he raised is how much we care about people who we come across. From his personal experience, he also says as we get older, we come to see how useless it is to be selfish - how illogical, really.

We come to love other people and are thereby counter- instructed in our own centrality. We get our butts kicked by real life, and people come to our defense, to help us, and we learn that we're not separate, nor do we want to be.

If someone asks me what I really want to be good at, I might say a designer, a writer, an artist. But in truth, I just want to be a really great lover, and make that a lifelong career.

It sounds like a vague concept, but the payback is very much concrete - both emotionally and practically. Art student Gloria Yu is a designer, writer and a citizen of the world.