Commitment, how to define it?

1 30 am. 07.09.2019

"Your life should be a story you are excited to tell” - Buddy

This morning, I read an inspiring blog of OKJ, a documentary storyteller from Singapore, reflecting on his long journey to accomplish the arduous and amazing video called “Trepass: Stories from Singapore’s Thieves Market”. I read it nonstop and realized this guy must be destined to be a storyteller. His work style is to bring audience to the journeys that can’t be described in words and pictures alone.

What I learned from him is the long commitment to an intention in the first place that he wanted to turn it into reality. Commitment to him is something internally gained overtime. But to me, it’s still somewhat a challenge to live with. Once in a while, I look back the journey I have gone through, I feel disappointed with myself on my commitment to different things in different stages. From the outside, all here and there stuff might look glorious, and I have reasonable excuses to explain why I have involved in such many paths as such.

2016 – Year of expectation, disappointment and exploration

After some first weeks in Hanoi Foreign Trade University, the time of a weak foot stepping into a new world out of a small rural village, I didn’t know that I would learn so many irrelevant theories to my life about economics and continue learning Math and draw complicated charts. Literally, I had never seen the catalog/ curriculum description or any shit about the major “International Business and Economics” in high school but I still chose to go for this major. Wasn’t it my fault to lay trust on the name of the brand, trust on my Mom’s decision, or the fault of the school that it never exposed their applicants to some details about the courses’ objectives and content? I asked myself many times what I wanted to study, the options seemed to be various as my entrance exam’s result could apply for most of the available majors, unfortunately, they all had no crucial related points to the essence of education like “Why and What” to consider, especially I didn’t even know what I aspired to learn.

My expectation towards the school collapsed for the second time when I received rejections from 2 big associations of the school for their high level of competitiveness. I was shocked by that unforeseeable facts because I used to be a super active girl over 12 years previously, I had never said no to any extracurricular activities back then. Even the clubs of dance as part of my interest which I had dreamed to join long time ago also gave me a punch into my face since it only serves experienced dancers.

Then I joined a Volunteer Club in National Economics University where those who come from the same province could gather and do volunteering together. I quit it after 1 month because the distance is too far away for me to bike daily 16 km. On the day full of anxiety and uncertainty, I saw a “2 day- 1 night camping event with biking to the suburb of Hanoi”, I made up my mind to go there immediately though I had no idea who the organizers and the participants were, I just wanted to escape to somewhere else out of the tunnel. The event turned out to be a small milestone in my life in which I biked 120 km for the first time, and got recruited into a kind community called “Hanoi Young Start-up” (HYS) that welcomes any left-behind youths like me. However, the club stroke no interest to me in terms of the topic “Start-up” at that time, even though it linked pretty much to my major. I also sought out a job as an English tutor which helped me to got certain payment to cover some basic needs, I worked as a young teacher for 5 months and quit due to the far distance and not much takeaway regarding self-development. I tried to fill up my empty time by going out to events and meeting up strange foreigners to build my English communication skill, which was never properly taught at the uni either.

There was nothing beautiful as the expectation given existed in a so-called “prestigious” school. This is my own experience, my friends still got to participate in top clubs, pitched ideas in some competitions, and had good relationships with professors, contrasting to my existence. Once the arrow was gone, I had to stick to it eventually, that was what I thought when I become so depressed with my learning environment after the first year. Therefore, I wanted to seek further meaning in this life if there is any craziness to experience, my mind could not be at peace obsessed by the scenario that my potentials were locked and suppressed pitifully.

2017 – Year of reality, uncertainty and jumps

The first brave jump I had was to volunteer to teach English in a primary school in Ayuttaya, Thailand that summer 2017. 6 weeks for me at that moment was long enough for a countryside girl to go abroad alone and stay in a Thai-spoken area with strangers. Now I think 6 weeks was too little to help a community to be practically better, and teaching a language should not be assigned to inexperienced youths at all because the delivery approach could negatively impact the way the students learn and expect. The good thing about the experience is the objective which is to develop leadership skills for youths, not focusing on helping communities.

It was the sparkling moment for me to see how the world out there is going on, how Vietnam was beautiful, how much sustainability was challenging human being, what was my responsibility and what I could do to be a part of that real world?!

The short exchange time led me to ask many questions about myself, my community, and my country.

In year 2, I was doing 2 jobs at the same time in 2 English centers but they have different ways of operation. One job is to assist the teachers to get the students to actively engage in the lessons, and I had 3 working evenings per week. I earned only little money, but got involved in a professional working environment that demands punctuality and the ability to communicate properly with the students who have international and rich backgrounds. One unforgettable memory of this job is the day I saw how impolite a rich kid was in disrespecting the teacher, as a consequence of how the kid was brought up, not because of the innocent kid himself. I also admired their smartness for being born in a family with full of opportunities to learn, however, they lack the sense of motivation like kids in the countryside. Would they ever dream to study in a good school, live in a good place, and even escape their house because it’s too miserable and gloomy for their future?

First time again, I empathized with the children in my hometown for the lack of access to prospects to unleash their potentials.

The other job was to assist my manager to do nitty-gritty tasks in a publishing project. The working frequency was 5 afternoons per week and most of the time what I had to cover was super time-consuming. From the positive side, I could closely talk to my boss and other colleagues who could give me advice and orientation. At times, I received some encouraging from my manager saying that I am still young, let do more and don't be afraid of anything. She has been part of the dots shaping me right now. An adventure. An inspirer. A cool woman. The point is at that time I was never asked such questions tapping into the personal motivation as “What is your goal in this job?” “What have you learnt today?” but all I had to do in both part-time jobs was to meet the deadline and finish the work.

Simultaneously, besides school, 2 jobs, I was surprisingly accepted to be a part of “Youth Leadership Program” after that beautiful summer in Thailand, in which we had to found real community projects after 4 months of ideating, coaching and building the content. The commitment was only half a year despite my strong claim to my coach was that I committed to be with the project once the program ended. This was a fluffy promise ever! Life is always easy to say things instead of doing things. Was it because I did not have strong motivation enough to stay dived in the project or because I was not capable of doing it alone? The first point would be more correct, the answer must be associated to the intrinsic motivation.

Back to OKJ work, he was wondering whether should he continue the passion of telling stories through documentaries or should he do something more practical. He dared to do the “real-passionate”work, his journey is truly rewarding for all of his efforts and long-term commitment to overcome uncountable obstacles. Times of rejection are not barriers, the barriers are whether we are resilient enough to follow the heart calling. Whenever I bring the lessons I learnt from “I COMMIT 9” to share, I usually proudly describe how much connection enlightened my mindset and all engaging activities included. One more highlighting picking-up in this journey is that to run a social project, you must have limitless commitment!

2018 – Year of courage, curiosity and enlightenment

Then I stopped the 2 part-time jobs after almost 4 months, I registered only 3 courses in the second semester to concentrate in the training for the IELTS test. I wanted to achieve a tangible record for myself by taking the test as an evidence of my language skill. For a person who have learnt English on my own, IELTS is something manageable to me. I went for it because I had almost nothing as a sophomore student, everyone had something to show like their GPA, their work experience, their knowledge… while my GPA was heading towards the slope for uncountable skipped classes and ignorant studying performances. It was the period of the worry that I might fall behind, I was scared of competitions and uncertain on what I was doing. What was my identity in such colorful environment?

After the AIESEC program overseas, my feet started to be itchy, my body was always hungry of discoveries, my mind was constantly looking for opportunities to travel and learn in the miraculous world over there. It was that I was too incompetent to be admitted into any further program, I had a big folder in my PC saving failed applications/ rejected emails which I am proud of. IELTS might be the hope for something in case of necessity. All of a sudden, the miracle happened, proving the belief “the less expectation is, the better we get out of life”. I got one more rejection from a program abroad, but Kulturstudier, an organization from Norway, welcomed me to their Development Studies course in Hoi An with a kind email on a nice summer day in that July. It was when I was enjoying my 1-month voluntary trip in Hoang Su Phi, Ha Giang, a spectacular mountainous area 400 km away from my home, in Northern Vietnam. I rushed back to school to prepare paper to be allowed to stop school for 6 months. As a matter of fact and connected dots, the 6 months later means “forever”.

Today of last year was the first weekend of that awesome course, I am sick because of missing my friends too much now. Every week was painted with exciting emotions and meaningful activities, I was travelling to the Wonderland for 2.5 months! I played football every Wednesday in spite of my incompetence, I learnt Yoga and volunteered to be the house representatives to join great dinner with the Admin team, I dived in the fieldtrips in some interesting sites in town or away to the mountain 3 times in 10 weeks while “Fieldtrip” sounds like an alien term in my uni context. I had mid-term holiday to discover Hue city alone when I took a train crossing by the aesthetic Hai Van pass, a breathtaking view from the window, I used Couchsurfing to stay with the incredibly friendly strangers, had spicy food and enjoyed the sunset in romantic Huong river. A nice stranger let me to use her bike over 4 days free of charge through which I rode along big and small roads of the city, to some small green hill to see the panoramic scene of the graceful river. I approached an NGO in Hue called Center for Research and Development (CSRD) to join any weekend activities and learn about NGOs, luckily, they brought me to supervise the Trash Classification Project in Quoc hoc Hue High School, a school of history charm and knowledge in Vietnam. As we had to do the group paper on the topic of NGOs, I got myself familiarized with it in advance to work well with my intelligent friends.

My traveling experience is open-ended and to be told… Commitment could also be investigated from the lens of a traveler whose life is not explicitly seen and understood just through the outlook. To me travelers are creative and always curious to uncover puzzles of the mysteries, they are committed to take risks and challenge themselves, mostly to test their boundaries.

There is no limit for the traveling spirit, it's probably true to admit my commitment is not that bad in this sense.

On a day wandering with distress in October 2018 after 1 amazing month in Hoi An, I thought of Hai Yen, founder of School of Gumption which I was following for 1 year through internet. I knew that the dream time must come to an end very soon. How would I be on the way back to that depressing school? I sent a long message elaborating on my confusion of what to do to Hai Yen though she did not know who I was. The moment I read her reply to my inquiry was that I almost lost my breath “So you can go to intern at School of Gumption for me.” This offer literally made me sleepless for nights, my heart beat uncontrollably as if I was born again. No metaphor could be given to describe that joyful moment. Many people asked me how I got that opportunity to intern in Singapore, the reply is it was my destiny.

To put it more reasonable, it was on my gut feeling that I took the initiative to seek advice, somehow, the universe gave me the answer.

Here is the reasons for GAP YEAR:

Hai Yen’s warm invitation drew me to be firmer to take a gap year and apply for School of Global Studies (SGS) in that October, the earliest round of admission. I was somehow finding whether SGS suits me as a human being, and this thought itself contributed to the desire to quit school and go crazy. Gap year is something posh to me as it is too risky in having no plan to afloat in life while I was already in a good school. What does it mean to be in such a school though? It means I had to embrace the pressure of the disliked courses, no belonging sense, no authentic interactions, and the feeling of getting lost spinning around like a mental burden everyday!

Additionally, the fantastic experience with my Scandinavian friends made the idea of returning to the conventional learning style disappear. “Yo, you are cool, let do it”, said my foreign friend supporting my concern of “Gap year” while my Vietnamese friends and family perceived I was mad, which does not matter anymore.

I missed the last week of the course. This was the most memorable opportunity cost for me, in exchange with one week with Teach For Vietnam in Tay Ninh province following School of Gumption team. Again, another first time to discuss on “social entrepreneurship” and the concept “systemic solution”, and “have the ownership to know ourselves”.

The final stage of the course is to work on the individual paper for 3 weeks and we are allowed to go whereever we like as long as the submission is on time. This freedom handed down my December to be chill in the middle of Ho Chi Minh city for the first time, alone again, among a bunch of thieves and chaos according to many confessions of people and I absolutely ignored on the common sense. I bet to approach my boss for a long stay in Saigon though I have no close relationship with his family, which sounds like a thick-face girl. His wife allowed me stay in their lovely house to my surpise and gratitude. The discovery into the paper and inside the bustling city began.

Who is this boss actually? I haven’t mentioned another parttime job that I took for the longest committing time over the list of jobs- 1 year! This is an online job that allows me to work distantly and get regular income for the living expenses. Not to that much, but it’s quite enough for me to never ask my mom money for coffee or travelling. The job title is S.E.O (Search Engine Optimization) writier for an established Travel Agency called “Vietnam Original Travel” in the cope of tourism across Vietnam – one of my hobby is to observe and love my country. Thus it seems that I got such a great cause to stay stick to it for one year, and especially the regular earnings are likely ideal for a sophomore kid. I remained the responsibility until May of 2019 because I was totally exhausted with 1 full-time job, 2 big projects, and the applying process for my new school. It was the most stressful time for me to the point that I lost 3 kgs.

2019 – Year of spirituality, resilience and love

To summarize this is the most striking time in my life so far.

Love from School of Gumption (SOG)

Love from Lens on Mekong (LOM)

Love from InnEdu

Love from Young Sustainable Impact Innovation Program Southeast Asia 2019 (YSI SEA)

Love from Global Studies and Social Entrepreneurship (GSSE)

To be continued...

To have a well-defined understanding about commitment, let have a look at Hai Yen's elaboration on the thinking towards Commitment:

"Intention influences attention. Having a clear intention allows our mind to selectively pick up information and opportunities that are relevant to our goals. It acts as a navigating compass for our decision making, prioritizing actions so that we can move closer to our vision of desired future."

and the way we feel about Commitment:

"There is a will, there is a way. Many times we face challenges and obstacles in our journey. In those moments, we doubt our own capability to make things happen with fear, self-judgment and cynicism. But it is exactly those challenges and obstacles that build up our capability to bring us close to the results we desire. "

No wonder that if we have a clear intention, we shape our reality and our commitment. How should have a great sense of commitment and to be really committed to the work have kept my mind introspecting for the past 2 months. I am aware what I should be committed to, be calm to seek the clarity and continue to believe in myself.

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Weirdly, my blog today goes back to my journey behind while my initial intention was to write about today and this week in Thammasat with GSSE. Interesting!

#calm

#thoughtful

#suspendjudgment