Weekend Engagement - Let's Talk About Human Beings

What has most disappointed you in your adult life and why, and how have you worked around it or improved the situation?

There are quite a number of interesting prompts this week, but I thought of trying out something perhaps a little more controversial and introspective as well.

So if I had to pick one thing that actually disappointed me a lot in adult life, that would actually be human beings.

So hear me out.

I grew up in a middle income family, we didn't have luxuries in life or fancy stuff, but my parents always made sure we had enough food, clothes, and money for our daily necessities. I was taught to be a good and law abiding citizen, to be a hardworking person and to study hard in school, to become the "model student" in school or the "model kid" that would make my parents proud, if there is such thing as what "model" actually means. There is nothing wrong or bad about that, in fact, it sounds like my upbringing was very positive. But on hindsight, I think I probably had quite a sheltered life.

As I entered my adult stage, I always thought everyone lived by these principles and standards, but I was so wrong. I learnt that human beings are such complicated creatures. One of the places that shaped my thinking would definitely be the workplace. There are people who are just all about bootlicking bosses, backstabbing colleagues, stealing credit from peers, playing office politics all day, and the list goes on. Just to be clear, I am not in any way criticising the places where I have worked at nor am I trying to paint a negative picture because I am pretty sure this is common to every workplace and we have all met such people as well (and of course, there will always be nice people too). Aside from work, there were a lot of instances where I had to deal with tricky people, for instance when I was getting my property, I had to face agents during the buying process, project managers and workers during the renovation process, and bankers and lawyers during the legal and mortgage stuff. I feel that everyone has their own self interest and it's not always aligned with the client, i.e. myself. Likewise for financial advisors as well. So I had to pick up stuff really quickly so that I know that I am not being "taken advantage of".

So what caused me to be disappointed? Like I said, I think I had quite a sheltered life and initially when I was just a young adult, I was just shocked and upset why people would do such things. I couldn't accept why the world out there was such a dog-eat-dog world. Why can't people be nice to one another?

Fast forward to today, I am absolutely fine. :)

I have accepted that this is what people are, and this is how the world works. (I mean, just look at what is happening around the world now?) I can and will continue to be myself, but I can't change the world or the people, so it's really a case of live and let live for me. From another perspective, everyone is just trying to get ahead in life and they might have their own stories and personal struggles that caused them to behave in a such a way, so sometimes, it's not right for me to judge as well. At the end of the day, like what some people say, we just need a few like-minded friends and loved ones in our lives and we don't need to be friends with everyone, or a people pleaser. And people who know me will accept me from who I am. And I am glad and always grateful that I have friends in real life as well as on Hive who can accept my idiosyncrasies! :)

So that's all I have for this "controversial" post! Weekends are always a good time for desserts, so here's ending off with another dessert that I had in my recent trip - that was at Italy and Venchi had this gelato shake! It was really sinful but being a desserts person, I knew I had to try it at least once!