A Letter From An Old Man I Knew From School.

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"if it's painful for you to criticized your friends,you're safe in doing it;if you take a slightest pleasure in it,that's the time to hold you tongue."
That's why I switched off my phone. I might, by greater chances, take a pleasure in eriteising you and other as well since in this last few weeks, I feel uneasy with most of the MEMBER 2001's attitude, way some of you speaks; so scornful and disapproving. A certain individual among you who used to confide in me easily and naturally had slopped doing so. No more friendly conferences. No more seeking advice. Just a sudden turn-off.
I sometimes have anxious, angry reactions to you young people because you all can be very trying. But I'm not going to let these reactions drive me away from you. I want to know why you teenagers think the way you all do.
I realised this is a passing personality phase, which in a youngster is not a permanent problem. Time always comes when the adolescent turns away and begins to look for values and guidance from their peer group and as well as other adults. This won't last forever.
Today youngsters really are something new under the sun. In some cases, they reach puberty as much as two years earlier than their parents did. In short, they develop much faster physically and sometimes the psyhcologically maturity doesn't keep pace. Here's Where most of the problems begins. As a parent, i feel alienated from my own children, so do many other parents. We asked "What's wrong with these teenagers? Why are they so ungrateful, so scornful of our values?". These questions reflect genuine concern. But often beneath the concern, there's also a smoldering resentment. It comes through in the disparaging reference to the way today youth dress, wear their hair or, seemingly refuse to "work hard towards a life goal.". Usually this anger is camouflaged. Sometimes it's not...
Why does there seem to be so much resentment? Why do adults feel alienated from their children?
I think,within alienation, there's a certain amount of unrecognized fear, parents are afraid that their children won't measure up to their expectations. Perhap there's also some envy. Adolescent have more leisure time, more freedom than adults had at their age. Some adults earnestly believe the kids just haven't suffered enough to deserve so much freedom.
Most of us, perants, prefer to think that we have no hostility or envy or fear where young people are concerned, but many of us do, and it is not suprising.
We're alarmed by the chilling statistics about teenager behaviour; drug abuse, pre-maritial pregnancies, involvement in crime, etc. We resent getting meager dividends on our investment of time and money and attention. We have uneasy sense that we're failing as parents, and this makes us feel guilty and feeling guilty makes us angrier than ever.
As I see it, some of the alienation stems from parents refusal to let youngster to do things their own way - and make the neccesary mistakes - in order to learn. It is impatient on the parents part and lack persistence in sticking with a task on the youngsters part; if anything called for sustained effort, must adolescents dropped it. Why? Blame it on TV, I supposed. Just imagined, day after day since from the age of three, you had been relentlessy expose to a medium in which all problems are given instantneous solutions; where every tangles in unsnarled within 30 minutes. How good would you be patient, sustained self-disciplined effort?
It is a failure of our adults society to provide the adolescent with a genuine, honest-to-goodness sense of involvement in living lies at the heart of estrangement and hostility. In hundreds of ways, today youth are telling us that they feel left out, bypassed, misunderstood or ignored by people who are imprtant to them : us adults. I can and still remember, my form three English teacher, Mr. HUBERT GOMEZ, said and i quote "Three things that can give any young man or woman a running start in this competitive world are good manners, good speech and the habit of reading. The humblest home can assure these; the costliest school cannot."
Young people needed situations where they can find valid adult models, after whom to pattern their lives. Ideally, parents should be the models, but often there simply isn't enough overlap of parent-child activities within the home. Many adults are inclined to assume that their youngsters wouldn't be interested in their activities or wouldn't understand them. But they might, if they weren't screened out.
One thing that bothered me about young people : Too many of them - adults too - treat life like a slot machine, trying to put in as little as possible and hoping to hit a jackpot. Life is not a gamble. Wiser people think of life as a solid investment from which they receive in terms of what they put in. To lead a better life, you need education. For every man, education should be a process which continue all his life. We have to abandon as swiftly as possible, the idea that schooling is something restricted to youth. How can it be, in the world where half the things a man knows at 20 are no longer true at 40 - and half the things he knows at 40 hadn't been discovered when he was 20?
You complained that you can't study well because the environment doesn't suits you; you don't really have friends there - are they FRIEND? - and they be friended you only to get your help yet you get nothing out of it from them. And that's the reason you want to "balik JB...". Have you forgotten what have you read in the pocket book that you gave me back in 2001? I quote.. "....kalau lah dia pandai mengurus masa dan pakai cermin mata...."
Speaking of time, there seem to be just two ways of perceiving it : some people complain about never having any, others are always looking for ways to kill time. 
Before I go on, please forgive me for my frankness. Honestly, your problem stems from your INABILITY TO SAY NO and stand by it. Many people take on too many responsibilities, not out of a spontaneous desire to help, but because they are afraid the other people will look them askance and because due to their OWN INSECURITY, they are dependent on their approval of others. Thus, they comply with every request, no matter how unpleasant. the desire to be praised and accepted can be so strong that they even refrain from saying how time consuming and difficult it has been to complete the task.
The problem for people who can't say no is that they always saddle themselves with burdened and exploited, and they get angry at themselves and about demands of others, in this case, a punishing friends; those who ungrateful and disdainful to those who are kind to them. You simply stop doing anything for them. You got to change - you must be different - and get ahead.
When things start going your way, it's usually because you stopped going the wrong way down a one-way street.
Tell me HAJAR,
- Where do you want to get in your life?
- What do you do the best?
- What gives you the most satisfaction?
To achieve your good, you need to bring yourself into sharper focus. If you set a high goal, you will have to pay a high price. You will have to work, take chances, make sacrifices, endure set back. You won't be able to afford the luxury of laziness or the delight of frequent distraction.
When setting your goal, remember that when you're willing to pay the price you're wasting your time. = Expect to pay for what you get.
Be willing to fail - temporarily.
Highly successful persons had only one trait in common : persistence. They keep picking themselves up and returning to the fight long after most other people would have given up. They dare to fail. Why not you?
Pin point your primary goal in life, determine exactly what you want, and when; Write down short summary of your goal and the achievement date; put it beside your bed and read it to yourself every morning when you wake up. Do remember vagueness is the invariable hallmark of the unfocused miad. Get rid of it.
*There must be intense, burning desire : put this hunger in you; you have to develop it yourself by constant, vivid imagining of the benefits that achieving your goal will bring. The clarity of purpose and intensity of desire are the chief ingredients. Unless you care, you won't get there. To become a focused person you have to control self-limiting thoughts. Examine your life. If it is out of focus, make up your mind to get it focus.
I wouldn't dare to say it going to be easy. In fact it's quite a stiff course in self-discipline, but yet if you makes a sustained effort to apply them, you will become a happier, more forceful, more effective person.


4 comments:

cHik said...

ni ka..
muka pakcik yg ko
pnh cter kat ak dlu?

itisrajah said...

sayunk!!
hee.
sukenye ade kau!
neh bukan muke dia la yunk.
neh gambar hiasan sje.
adeh!

~ainun~ said...

aku x sempat nk bc la..
pnjg sgt.
dye pandai + terer thp terrorist ar BI dye..
nway, Al-Fatihah wat arwah.

itisrajah said...

enon - btol2.nt kalau sempat bace la.memang mendalam kate2 dia.i mish him really much.