My Epiphany

He is hailed as a visionary, genius, prodigy, an alien even.

"He came from China where he studied no english and in merely one year he topped the class with an A!" as quoted by a 'commoner’, the same fellow claimed that “he was just being himself! Doing everything at the same time!”

He gets everything in life, let me rephrase, everything he wants: friends, family, music, games, opportunities, respect, determination, passion, a meaningful life. He is the epitome of perfection in everyone’s eyes. Parents use him to demoralize their kids when they are not performing academically adequate. Classmates aspire but never know how to be someone like him. Everyone speaks of him like this mystical creature living in a different dimension, which we can only struggle to keep abreast with him, which we are never able to surpass him.

We somehow simply just accept the unequivocal fact that he was extraordinary. As ashamed as I was, I was no different from anyone else, never making the slightest effort in figuring out the reason behind his incredible feats. However on that fateful night I changed my perception of life I was blessed with the fortunate opportunity to have an intelligent conversation with him.

I was overwhelmed by his tenacity in leading a fruitful life. He developed this ‘system’ as he called it from the book: ‘Getting Things Done’ by David Allen. In a nutshell, he organizes his life based on paper, except it’s not like our conventional diary; it is a database of his thoughts. Imagine Dumbledore’s pensive where you store excessive thoughts to be pondered over later, where you revisit when you want to review your mind, where your brain’s most intricate notions and ideologies are formulated. And what’s amazing is that is just the tip of the iceberg.

With all those knowledge safely tucked under the blanket of his virtual document, he accesses them in extreme detail to delineate the ultimate targets he is striving for. After assiduously substantiating his claims of he wants to do with his life with evidences from the database of information, he lives by a series of very systematic set of timetable he laid down after he has done the things. In other words, he writes his scheduled things after he has done them, while retaining the astonishing effect of keeping on track with his target.

My pathetic description of his profound work is doing injustice to the sheer magnitude and potency of the ‘system’. As I stood there getting blown away by how determined he is in milking life for all it’s worth, I was left thinking about the countless apologies I should have said to my parents, friends, people I have met that tried so hard to help me become who I want to be but to no avail because of my obstinate childishness.

I had always pride myself on knowing what I was doing with my life.

Now I take pride in my ability to fall and get back on track.