I celebrated my 26th birthday yesterday.  The day was spent with my oldest friends over food and mahjong, and it was also spent reflecting on my life this past 26 years.  Looking back, I thank God for His blessings in my life and the friends and family who have been with me every step of the way.

While I was thinking back on the bigger milestones in my life, I realised that I never would have been able to guess that I would end up where I am now.  Yet, I am right where I am supposed to be.  I was just telling Teck yesterday that somehow all the skills that I picked up in school has come into use in some way or another at work.  Like what Steve Jobs said in his Commencement speech to Stanford University, you can only ever connect the dots retrospectively.  I now have a newfound understanding of what he meant.

To try to engineer your own future by trying to fit your life into some sort of mould that someone else told you is good would only bring about unnecessary angst and pain.  Unfortunately, so many of us fall into this trap because of familial and societal expectations.  I call this the fallacy of the perfect picture. [Read more…]