When the opportunity is mature?

13 of March: overall flashback

I have the habit whenever I meet those who leave certain meaning to my life, I will ask them to do me a favor that is to write anything at the end of my notebook. Though I have tried to treasure every available moment to talk with the person, to pay attention to the details that can be easily missed out, I am not be able to capture everything in my mind. Asking for their writing is a way to save such “footprint’’ of the people that come into my growing journey as long as to remind me of how either subtle or enormous impacts they bring to my life.

Unplanning is destined to be planned in advance

This second month interning at School of Gumption, I had much less time to be with Hai Yen, my dear teacher who has dramatically enlightened my limited spectrums of thoughts for the recent months. I had never imagined that there would be a day I could set my foot to Singapore, let alone work for a social enterprise working on the topic that I am passionate about. I was in the middle of making the mile-stone decision that whether I should take a gap year or not. I asked my friends who have strongly supported my ambition to pursue my interest but I did not have enough dare to continue an uncertain way. I tried to think of all people that I trust to seek advice to make the soundest choice not to regret till the rest of my life. One day, one moment sparked my thought on Hai Yen, the lady that I had never met before but I was following School of Gumption’s website for exactly one year since we started the first social project.

Break to grow

Our team members were all young and in the time of finding our own identity, which was a huge motivation for us to embark on a project of exploring personal development. In a sense, I aimed not only to help young students in Hanoi to get better understanding of their values but also to get ourselves across the idea of “break to grow”. We all had such vague ideas of personal values because we all had never got the chance to learn at school. We decided that we need to find some proven theory that is practical for us and the beneficiaries of the project, especially convincing enough to get funded and supported. Somehow, we found out Theory U that linked us to Hai Yen, a professional practitioner of Theory U- a theory focusing on both inner and outer transformation of human beings, a concept for our team to be acquainted to “Break to grow”. However, I did not meet Hai Yen that time.

Self-readiness for mature opportunities

It’s true that when we are not ready to seize the opportunity, it’s hard to seize the sense of self-growth. The opportunity can be available but we will not make the most out of it without harboring any purpose and being ready to leverage on the opportunities. Equally, I might be very interested in the mission and vision of SOG, I tried to read through Theory U and research the 6C values of SOG, I was focusing on holding the workshops at the time, I could barely manage to comprehend the insights of those “theories”. It is because I did not have enough readiness and willingness to get over the barriers of “lacking personal development”. The project gave me courage to ask my boss to collaborate and sponsor our program, then gave me the ever-embarrassing moment of being rejected because I could not answer his question What do you define “personal development”? It was my first time to get out of the comfort zone to ask for help on the aspect that I had little experience in, the help from the person that I always had some intellectual gap with when I was such a small girl with full of cowardice and fear in front of “experienced” people.

Back to the stuck moment of making a tough decision in last October, I sent a long message to Hai Yen with the most authentic description of my situation and my need for her orientation, just orientation. Shortly after, she offered me an opportunity of the internship for School of Gumption, and the invitation to accompany SOG to join the trip to Tay Ninh to meet Teach for Vietnam. My whole gap year plan started filling since then…

Well, the opportunity will come when we are ready to rock it!

At the end of the trip to Tay Ninh, I both asked Steven and Liu Yan to write on my notebook, e excepted for Hai Yen as I believed we would have longer time to go together later on. Therefore, last week, I knew it was the right time to ask for her sharing in my adorable friend- a notebook. She said she hopes I will not stop at trying new things but furthermore, I could try doing something big on my own. “I am not sure how long I could be with you, but I will always watch the seeds that I have germinated and look forward to their sprouting”… To a certain stage of life, we can have the ability to look through people, in other words, we can read others’ mind like such incredible “fortune tellers”. SOG are that excellent! Today, Steven shared his thoughts on my personality that I am ambitious and brave to try new things, yet I should not keep trying many things in the long term because time is short and will not be long for jumping in new things all the time. I get it. I get what I need and want to do. Just move on!

The point of this post is to spread the warm-heartness and generosity of SOG team in terms of offering help and learning opportunities for youth. To reflect on the whole journey, it’s nothing but the presence of humanity throughout all course of action and events. It is also the emphasis on the importance of taking risks and getting ourselves ready to seize the opportunities, especially, the fact that no matter how tough the decision can be, we have to make them anyway.

That’s life!