Lessons of Life

Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.

Lessons of Life will be a series of blog posts talking about philosophies, inspirations and really normal things in life that has taught me exceptional things. The world and all the experiences that i will be having will be our classroom and our teacher will be my senses, my analysis and my imagination. Whenever a blog post is titled Lessons of Life, it means that i had an epiphany of sorts and would like to share it with you.

Please do feel free to comment below with your own ideas, experiences and judgement. There is no right or wrong. Only outcome.

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Last Saturday i was out cycling in the East Coast Park with my girlfriend. Both of us had a great time chatting while we cycled for miles and miles along the pavements of Singapore’s beaches. It was pretty hot but we didn’t let it affect our spirits to have a great date. I should have brought us some sun tan lotion as by the end of the day, both of us had a little bit of sunburn which was not at all comfortable the next day.

When cycling i noticed that my girlfriend’s philosophy of moving forward with the bicycle is very different from mine. That was when a lesson of life came to mind.

Lessons of Life – There might be 2 ways and both work

Even though the both of us were using the same type of bicycle, and paddling it with both our left and right legs, our philosophies of getting ahead are very very different. How can it be different?

Well my girlfriend throughout the entire time was paddling very consistently. She never stopped, never slowed down and never sped up. I on the other hand will paddle a few strokes with good effort and then stop paddling and allow the bicycle to travel until i think it is slowing down too much before i start on a few strides again.

The thing is, both of us were traveling at about the same speed. Both of us were getting to the same place at about the same time. And both of us were having fun cycling the way we think best fits us.

Lessons of Life – Epiphany of a simple observation

I rode the bicycle in a patterned sequence of efforts because i wanted to enjoy more of focusing on our conversations at times and relaxing in the journey of moving forward. My girlfriend however rode her bicycle in a constant fashion because for her consistency is less tiring and she enjoys the journey when it is consistent. We are both right and we both had a good time.

In life to many a times we look at our own situations and preferences and decide that things have to be done in a certain way. Sometimes we even argue to force someone else to do it our way. What i learned during this date was that it is alright to have 2 ways of doing things. We just have to look at our objectives and determine what they are and how we want to do it.

Different people might have different philosophies of getting to the same place with different strategies. If the methods work for them let them do it their way. And we do it with our most comfortable way.

With that we can all have very happy journeys together.

Lessons of Life simply found.