Life is all about challenges. It is hard to imagine
a single individual who would breeze through life without encountering a single
problem, a time where they felt a loss of hope, be it temporary or a more
lasting period, through times of frustration and despair. Some individuals have
the misfortune to face these times more than others, and who is to say what is
fair and what isn’t?
This is a story about a girl close to my heart. It
is not my story, but it is also mine to tell, for I have experienced enough of
what she has to understand the taste of what she endures. This story is not
about the major challenges of the world, of hunger and poverty and depression,
but a story about a single individual and her personal challenge, or rather, a
very small part of it.
The girl in question has always been on of the
bubbliest, liveliest, friendliest people I know. Perhaps on occasion she comes
across as brash and overconfident. Little Miss Popular. The one who attracts
all the attention. The pretty one.
She cares so deeply about her friends she has gone
through large extents to maintain old friendships, if only for old times sake,
and sometimes, time can no longer sustain the embers of the close rapport they
once had, and I hear the wistfulness in her voice as she talks about old
friends. Despite being surrounded with her new, fun friends, sometimes she
still wishes for the familiarity of being with the old neighbourhood gang.
The girl I know is deeply passionate. She aims to
save the world one day, or at least make it a better place to live in. In
Perhaps, one of the things that cuts the most are
her parents. Solid, mainstream Malaysian parents who believe their children
should become accountants and doctors and engineers and architects, so-called
professional courses, and despite her achieving deans list every single
semester in the course she loves, they often lack to acknowledge her
achievements and often lapse into criticism, and ever so often she cries out
her frustration at the lack of support she receives, and wonders if everything
she does is truly worth it.
Who knows the ending of a story. Perhaps she will
go on to save the country, and the world one day. I have seen her face these
challenges, and I believe that the obstacles she endures have made a stronger
person, a better person, and perhaps the reason God has chosen to put so many
challenges in her path is because she has the strength within to become the
person she is destined to be.
