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People who meet me think I’m relatively normal. They usually
refer to me as that girl who doesn’t talk much, but who has
amazing silky, straight hair. People who meet me don’t
realize that I have a disease. It’s a common disease, but
one rarely reported to doctors. The symptoms can include
stress, anxiety, paranoia, a tendency to withdraw from the
outside world and pain, in, and around the chest area. This
disease is known as Insecurity. It can also be referred to
as Self-bashing or Self-worthlessness Syndrome (SWS). I
don’t know exactly when I caught the disease, but I’m
starting to suspect that maybe I was born with it. The
greatest difficulty about growing up with such a disease is
that it has restricted me from living life to the fullest. I
can’t look at people in the eyes, I encounter a rapid
heartbeat when around strangers and occasionally my paranoia
makes me envision things that aren’t there. The saddest
reality is that the doctor says she can’t prescribe me any
medication. She says I have to find my own cure. “What kind
of disease requires you to find your own medicine?” I asked.
“One that is self-inflicted”, she said.
For the most part of my life, I’ve felt like my disease is
curse. I often ask myself what I ever did to deserve such a
punishment. Since then, however, people such as Princess
Diana and Nelson Mandela have taught me that unfortunate
circumstances can in fact be blessings in
disguise. Princess Diana was compelled to aid the suffering
and the abused because she herself suffered emotional
anguish. Nelson Mandela was determined to confront racism
because he himself suffered from racial prejudice. As they
have been motivated to change the world through their
encounters with adversity, I too have learnt to make my
disease the very basis of my lifelong dream. For the first
time in my life, I’ve been able to look beyond my own
suffering to recognize that there are millions of people in
this world who suffer from this same disease. The poor
suffer from it when they are ignored, the uneducated suffer
from it when they are ridiculed and the physically inferior
suffer from it when they are judged. And so, my dream is to
become a person who can inspire others to find their own
cure…to see themselves as equals. I want people to realize
that being human makes them equal and that being alive means
they’ll always have choices.
It was Joseph Epstein who once said “All men and women are
born, live, suffer and die; what distinguishes us from
another is our dreams, whether they be dreams about worldly
or unworldly things, and what we do to make them come
about…We do not choose to be born. We do not choose our
parents. We do not choose our historical epoch, the country
of our birth, or the immediate circumstances of our
upbringing. We do not, most of us, choose to die; nor do we
choose the time and conditions of our death. But within this
realm of choicelessness, we do choose how we live.” Such
words, as simple and obvious as they may be, embody the very
essence of what I want to achieve in my life. I want to make
people realize that regardless of their circumstances, they
will always have choices. I come from Vietnam, a country
where life is seemingly an endless realm of choicelessness;
a country where people don’t dare to dream of the future
because they must strive even to secure their next meal; a
country where dreams and aspirations are crippled by poverty
and suffering. What may not occur to most people, however,
is that amidst all this choicelessness, they are always
given choices. People may not have a choice on whether or
not they are poor, but they can choose to work for their
money rather than steal from others. People may not be able
to determine whether or not their dreams will come true, but
they can choose to strive towards them rather than sit back
and watch their lives go by. Even in a country such as
Australia, which is often referred to as “the land of
opportunity”, countless people still feel that they have no
choices in life. I see this when I look at people who’ve
turned to drugs, violence and crime as a way of life. While
these people may have strayed along such paths by choice,
they often feel as though they were given no choice. This is
understandable as life often has a way of forcing upon us
circumstances over which we have no control. My dream,
however, is to make such people realize that they do have
choices, that they will always have choices. The choices may
never be easy, but ultimately we have a choice of how we
live our lives.
Although Princess Diana and Nelson Mandela played a major
role in influencing my dream, my main source of motivation
was slightly closer to home. I find my main inspiration
every time I look into my parents’ eyes. Every time I look
at my parents, I realize that they are the people I want to
inspire everyone to be like. They are people who, although
they were forced to endure circumstances over which they had
no control, never once let these circumstances change who
they were. Coming here as refugees and having to live with
the label of a refugee has meant that my parents have
continually endured ridicule, racial prejudice and bigotry.
Regardless of what people say or do to them, however, my
parents have constantly lived up to their own expectations.
My dad works three jobs a day and he gets no more than 6
hours sleep every night. He is a cleaner, yet he holds his
head up high and works as though he were an executive. My
mother can’t speak English, and yet she tries her best.
Although she has constantly received racial remarks, she
doesn’t harbour an ounce of animosity inside of her.
Together, my parents have inspired me to become the person
that I am and will continue to inspire me as I strive to
accomplish my lifelong dream.
As vivid as my dream is, I know it will not magically
materialize over night. First and foremost, I realize that
to accomplish such a dream I must first find a cure for my
detrimental disease. The road is long, the fight has been
hard, but I know, one day I can become a person who will
inspire others to learn a lesson that I am still learning
myself- we always have choices. |
