Monday, September 1, 2014

Ambitions

When I was 7, I wanted to be a garbage collector. To hang by the side of that banged up truck that used t pass in front of my house and fling large black plastic bags filled with rubbish into a big heap of other garbage. To me, these men made our lives so much better, they were doing all the things no one else wanted to do. I used to run out every other evening to watch them at work. How noble and extremely styled they seemed doing it. Then at 8, I wanted to be a bus driver. Every morning I would see the lady driver turn the big huge wheel of the bus round and round and how easy she made it seem. She would pick us up all on time and deliver us back safely to our eager parents waiting every day at the end of the streets. For some time after that, I didn't quite know what I wanted to be. As i grew older, my ambitions changed many many times but there was always a similarity that existed between all of them. They were all driven by events that helped me or the people around me at the time;making it a lot easier for a lot of us to just live our daily lives.

So it's no surprise that as I grew up and watched more movies, and read more my ambition shifted from a human rights activist, to a rockstar to a genetic scientist then finally to a physiotherapist. These were all things that helped me throughout my life journey to be where i am here. And today, I am a physiotherapist helping people in my own way making their lives seem a little better every day.

I love my job no matter where i am, or who i'm treating but I have to admit that when I was in Zambia, Africa it was when i looked and touched the sexually abused kids that clinged to my baggy jeans that i felt an instant connection with. It was when I was in a rural clinic in Alor Setar, Kedah in Malaysia with hardly any physiotherapy equipment that I felt I finally belonged. These are the very little essential things that keep me going in this often cruel world.

It's hard to remain as optimistic for change as I would say I am reading what we all read in the papers, seeing all that we see everyday. But for some reason, probably out of sheer self motivation and by inspiring stories of the many individuals i live my life by , I've managed to salvage that optimism to want to bring some good to this world. To change what I think should be changed. Being a physiotherapist, I deal with too many "illnesses" that seem to be self inflicted either by lack of education, lack of motivation and the badly run systems in place governed by the state. Needless to say, I'm someone who wishes to achieve all that I possibly can! We need better policy makers, we need passionate people to put better systems in place.

I'm still always wanting to be something new, every day of my life and that's GREAT! I hope if everything else about me changes, that that does not.

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