杨捷煊 宁波工程学院
Ladies and gentlemen,
Do you think this topic implies a battle between striving and dreaming? I would say they are not in conflict. Whether to strive or to dream depends on what you expect out of life. What you dream determines how hard you have to strive. Do you ever dream of a big house, a fancy car, decent salary, or a prospective career that appeals to everyone? If you dream of anything like these, you’re gonna bear the pressure in life. There has never been a shortcut to a wealthy life. In other words, you need to make great efforts to make good money. My cousin is a case in point.
He’s an engineer working in Beijing with a monthly pay around 10,000 yuan after tax. Sounds not bad. But he has to work over 58 hours a week, and that’s more than 11 hours every working day. With another two hours commuting to work, he has to start out at 7 am and come back at 8pm every day. What is worse is that occasionally, he has to work extra hours on weekends. What a busy life! He said he was burn out. There are loads and loads of people like him who have to struggle in order to keep their jobs secure, and support their families.
However, he has nothing to complain about, as this is his dream to stay in Beijing and he has to sacrifice. But we keep hearing complaints from previously ambitious, optimistic and tough young man that have somehow become picky, prickly and grumpy, a dramatic change we commonly find in today’ young adults, who are presumably in a dilemma, striving for a better living while not well aware of what their dreams are. Unprecedented pressures exerted on us, no matter where they stem from, term papers, workplace, social events and economic factors, are killing the last breath of our withering passion. Yet what we have to bear in mind is the fact that once we choose, we have to give something up. If we choose to live in an expensive city, we have convenient transportation, we shop in big malls, and we have a variety of food to eat in restaurants, but we suffer from heavier pressures in order to get these. Complaints do not help relieve our stress, and we can leave for a small city for a peaceful living. You don’t have to live in a metropolis as other people do, because working in a big city doesn’t necessarily mean being successful, let alone being happy. We suffer from pressures because we always want more. We want everything that seems to possibly bring happiness in our lives. We want so may things that we even forget what happiness is and what we only see are tons of pressures.
Stop for a minute or two, taking a sip of coffee or tea, chit-chatting with an old friend that you haven’t talked to for a long time because of your busy life, and maybe reading a book and going to a movie, and most importantly, these relaxing times would help recall the original dream buried deeply in your soul. By way of figuring out what you really want, passion comes back, and pressure goes away.
