A Gift of Smile

On my way back to hostel today, as usual I saw my cobbler with his daughter, the ever cheerful and active young girl running here and there. His dad will be sitting under the shady tree working with shoes everyday as you can see in the photo. Without hesitation I sat there, looked at her and gave her the smiley ball that I always carry alongside me. She was jumping with joy upon receiving the ball. I never realized even such a small yet simple thing will bring joy to her. Seeing her playing with it and bouncing it across the street made my day too. That’s the reason why I always carry simple things that can bring joy to others, because you never know some people may need it more than you do~ =)

I was recovering from my trauma after getting such a relatively low marks for my Multiple True False paper in Physiology today. I have spent hours of preparation for this test but maybe I am not giving my 100% focus on it. However, my sadness will not last long as we should not be too stuck onto something bad for a long time. Looking at how the little girl living a happy life even without shoes, without iPad and without a clean toys like what other girls of the same age have in Malaysia, made me realized life is not about exams, we live to live, not to grief over something bad that cannot be reversed.

I never put high expectation to myself as I realized the higher expectation we have, the higher chances we will become unhappy. As studying in medical course is extremely tough and competitive, one way of living through it happily in this 5 years for me is to accept it and adapt to it but not to compare myself with others. There are only 2 outcomes if you compare yourselves with others.

1)  If you compare yourselves with people who have better results than you, then you will feel inferior and tend to stress up yourselves. Deal with it! Tell yourself that they are more hardworking and they sacrifice their time more, they deserve the good results!

2) If you compare yourselves with others who have bad result and generally lower performance than you, then you will feel relieved for a short moment, before you realized you shouldn’t compare yourself with them as they are not worth comparing. Thus,most of us tend to compare with people who are greater, smarter and better than us, which is healthy but should not be taken too seriously.

In a nutshell, we are who we are and there are times where we struggle so hard that we forget who we actually are. Be yourself because you are unique in your own way!