Exploration is the heart of humanity since the beginning of mankind. Our great ancestors travel across Africa to the rest of the world long time ago, before they understand language or become aware of themselves. Human have been trying to explore the uncharted area then and now, to the once-unimagineable moon, to the deepest ocean, among other exploration in the world. Not only places, we also study on molecules and atom, technological advances, and the human mind. Perhaps the latter was the most abstract concept we’ve ever encountered, the uncharted human mind which consist of awareness, thoughts, and capacity to think beyond other living things.
People think about exploration as something challenging, a lifelong mission to be contributed to the world and marked our existence in the universe. Exploration exist in spirit of every human, whether we realise it or not, we do have the spirit. It is said that happiness comes from engagement of activities we love that contribute to the larger society, something meaningful to ourselves and the world. Then exploration may be the answer related to happiness, by deeper exploration in science, technology, medicine, archeology, and various other studies we are contributing a knowledge. These accumulation of knowledge could be synthetised and applied to daily life, to improve the quality of society.
If only every person know what he/she want from their life and what they want to contribute to the world, this world would be full of happy people. Imagine every person in the world doing what they love to do and they could do it everyday! And I believe having a job we are passionate in is one way to fulfil a meaningful and happy life. Not only for the joy of living, doing a job we love will make us study harder and deeper in our field of interest simply because of our curiosity.
Today, we do have the freedom to choose our own path in life. Perhaps not everybody has the support to study in university or college, but today the internet is the biggest source of knowledge. Anything you want to know is there, if you where to search it. There are experts online publishing their works and sharing it with people in the same field of interest. But simply the question we have to ask is, “what is my passion?”
For a simple question, many people are lost in the process of answering it for themselves. I, myself think I’m a “Jack of All Trades”, good at everything but master of nothing. But from all of the thing I could do, I must be slightly better in one fields than another. And it has to be the field I’m passionate in, something I could do everyday with joy, something feel more like play rather than work. What comes to your mind when reading the line above? That might be your passion.
Two words come straight to my mind when I’m writing this, “travel” and “photography”. Few people travel to five continents in their life or even leave their hometown, but when I heard exotic places and trip to part of world I’ve never been to my heart beats faster and adrenaline rushes my bloodstream. I could talk about places I’ve been to and want to go for all day long, but I could barely found someone that resonates with me nearby. I also study photography so I could record a scene I’ve see and rejoice the memory once more. Photography becomes a medium for me to share experiences and beautiful scenery I’ve been to.
I do occasionally travel and usually I do photograph thing along the way, but in reality I’m more often in a hospital as a medical student. Don’t get me wrong, I do like working as a doctor helping people (although drugs and therapist do most of the job) but it doesn’t give me the same thrill as if I’m hiking the stairs in Cape of Good Hope, South Africa. But to traveling do cost money, and yet I didn’t acquire enough money from photography and travel itself. I simply think my future work as a doctor is part of my contribution to the world around me and to give meaning to my life, a selfless thing I did when I could. While traveling is for myself, to live a life the way I wanted. I haven’t figured all this thing completely though, but I surely make some progress everyday.
What about you? What do you want to do in this life as a contribution to the society and live a meaningful life?
Journeyman 