To Be A Better Man

When school begins, your time is probably splitted into three parts - 8 hours of sleep, 8 hours of school and 8 hours of free time. Of course this is just an assumption. The actual may vary from people to people. And so our journey begins.

At the start, homework wasn't that hard and not too much. A couple hours each day and you complete the homework and the studying. But for certain reason unknown to you, your parents decide to send you for tuition. 2 hours of free time gone just like that. That leaves you with 4 hours of free time. Still enough to enjoy. With this balancing of time you manage to score an A.

As time pass, homework becomes harder to do and the quantity increases steadily. A couple hours each day is no longer enough to cover everything and to maintain the A result. So you increase the time spent on homework and studying to 3 hours. And for certain reason which probably start with a K and ends with a U, your parents decide to send you for more tuition. 3 hours for tuition. so that leaves you with 2 hours of free time. Barely enough to enjoy. But when you factor in the time needed to complete tuition work, you find yourself almost running out of time. Despite the fact, you rolled up your sleeve and keep on working hard to get that A.

Finally a big break. SPM is over and you proceed to pre-U life. You no longer find yourself needing to spend 8 hours for school and no more tuition. But the one thing that didn't change is the expectation of people for you to get an A. Due to less hours spent in a teacher student setting, you spent extra time to work hard on your own to improve yourself. And you have more time to hang out with friends, find a romantic partner, learn how to hold hands (Ivy, this part is for you). A fleeting moment of enjoyment.

Before you realize it, you have reached the undergraduate stage. So how the 8 hours of college is back. So you're back to 8 hours of official stuff, 8 hours of sleep and 8 hours of free time. And you were thinking that I'll do a 2 hour study + doing assignment every day. Despite the long hours of college, you find yourself needing to a lot of self studying as a lot is not covered in class which you only found out when you got your first B. Shocked by the result and the different tone of voice other speak to you, you decided to spend more time to get back the A. So 2 hours become 3 hours. Slowly 3 hours become 4. Just to maintain that A and to not get the disapproving look from others, you slowly find yourself running out of free time. But thankfully the three years pass by in a flash and you graduated with a first class honors. Yay for you.

A major transition into the working life. At first you don't really have much to do. Not much to bring home to do as most can be complete while you're still at work. You work hard to climb the corporate ladder just like what everyone else expected. But as you rise, the workload increases. You can still handle it. Somewhere along the lines, you found your partner in life. A blissful wedding and now you have a family.

Time passes and you climb up the ladder. A few kids at home and a loving wife. A new direction. For the family. At this point you realized that your free time is either consumed by work that needs to be completed at home or by the family. You no longer have much time for yourself. Workload increases and you find yourself spending less time with the family. Slowly but surely the time spent on work increases. Until it fully consumes your free time. Deciding that you need to spend more time with your family, you gave up some of your sleep time.

Reduced sleep resulted in a decrease in performance. Your job is really killing your personal life. You wanted to quit, change a job, find something that pays as well as the current job but demands less of your time. Only to find out that other jobs can hardly cover the expenses. You realize that there are kids to feed, loans to return and bills to pay. Having no other choice, you continue on with your work.

Until one day your partner told you that he/she had enough. S/He told you that everytime you come back you don't spend time with the family and all you do is work work and work. You told her that it is to put food on the table but she will not listen. You got a divorce and without the kids. Now you come back to a house without a caring hug from your partner, without the cheerful sounds of the kids and without warm food on the table. Welcome to the mid-life crisis.

So, what's next?

Note: This progression is just one of the many that may occur. Do take note of such a progression when you are planning for the future to avoid unwanted/undesired events.

Disclaimer: This story is purely fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.