COMMON, FOLLOW ME
Anytime I go to visit my friend at home, her 3-year-old niece is always happy to see me. She loves to be with me because I use to play a lot with her and buy her chocolates when visiting my friend. Every time she noticed that I'm about to take my leave, she will follow me. I and my friend will send her back but she will refuse. She will keep crying and following after us. To get away, we will lie to her that we will wait for her outside that she should go inside and put on her shoe. Immediately she enters to get her shoes from her mum, I and my friend will quickly run with full speed so that by the time she returns, she won’t even see any shadow that looks like us.
This style always works for us until one particular day, I went to visit as usual. We played together and did everything we always do together. When I was about to leave, we noticed we didn’t see Tara (my friend's niece). We sighed with relief because she saved us from the headache of her cry. I decided to quickly put on my shoe, perhaps she could come out anytime soon. All of a sudden, I started looking for the second leg of my shoe. We searched and searched and searched, we could not find the left-leg. We were still searching when we saw Tara coming out. Immediately we saw her, we pretended like we did not see her. We were like, “Oh gosh, she will start crying again. If only we had seen the second leg of the shoe, we would have been gone by now. She won’t even know when we left.” Little did we know that we were in for a surprise! To our greatest surprise, Tara approached me, stretched forth her hand and in her sweet tiny voice, she said: “take your shoe”. What! I and my friend looked at each other and we were shocked. How did she know we were looking for my shoe? Ok, we thought maybe she just found the second leg of the shoe by coincidence. But we couldn’t help to notice that she was well composed and extremely happy. She had a mischievous smile and you could tell she was up to something. My eyes drifted to her legs and I saw she came out to us well prepared. She had her pair of shoes already worn.
It was as if we were dreaming. Tara walked past us and decided to take the lead. She went in front of us, looked back and waved her hand to us to signal ‘come’. We suddenly became disabled and we couldn’t move. She started walking with charisma and confidence and called out so loud “common, follow me.” We were like robots whose remotes were in her little hand. We could not recover from the shocker she gave us, and this time we had no more excuse or option for escape. Who could have thought the little girl would out-smart us?
Life comes as a surprise. When we came to this world, it was a surprise for us to realize that the environment has changed, we were no longer in that little self-contained room, called “womb.” And the truth is that surprises will never seize from happening in our lives as we grow older. For us to excel in life, we have to learn the tactic of life, which is “be dynamic.” We can’t keep doing the same thing over and over and expect that it will always yield the results we hoped for every single time. It is often said that change is the only constant thing. Therefore, it is important to be dynamic so that we can ride with whatever surprises life throws at us.
Just like Tara from the story, she learned to be dynamic, and that took us by surprise. For her, doing the same thing over and over again isn’t worth it, so she realized she had to change her manner of approach. And for us, we were already confident that doing the same thing over and over again worth it until the day we were taken by surprise. When you think that there is no need for an upgrade in your actions, you will become outdated.
BE DYNAMIC!