Lao Voices

This kind of thinking came from a lady by the name of Rose, I once read about her that she went back to school at the age of 87 because she wanted a college degree, which her dream came true, plus a bonus of had had many friends. A week after she graduated, she peacefully passed away.

One might say, gosh, that old, what was the point of her going back to school? Who was old? Definitely not her, this was her exact word, “Each one of us didn’t stop playing because we are old, but it is because we feel old and that is to why we stopped playing.”

Think about it, might also be a sign of aging if no one wants to play with you (or you are not a nice person), would you not say that most of us are happiest when we are laughing, and you will always be young, if not by age, then youthful that is. If you are happy, then your happiness will radiant out to those around you, and success will follow.

I am a happy person, most of the time that is, so I am still young (I quit counting my age when I passed 29), but age is not an important factor, it is how you feel, that you still have dreams, the inspiration to do many great things. For some, they might want to have one million dollar to their names because they want to be a millionaire, not a bad dream and very attainable in my opinion, but let us just hope that by the time you have one million dollar, it will still be worth as much as it is worth today because of time value of money. But as for me, money is not that important, if I want one million or more, I just go to Laos, one million kip to my name that is.

It is not enough to just dream, one of my favorite quotes by Langston Hughes, “Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly”, we have to make that dream to become reality, never loose that inspiration, faith, self respect, and dignity, as for most of us, we would loose interest in what we are doing when we see that things aren’t going as plan, and it might be that we just need another approach or need another stab at it.

I am extremely impressed of what has become of LaoVoices today, what brought this together was the dream that Darly has, and the dreams that many of us shared, as Eugene Ionesco nicely put that “ideologies separate us. Dreams and anguish bring us together.” As I once heard that once you loose your dream, you are somewhat dead, there are many people out there that still walk, talk and breath, but in the sense they are dead…they just don’t know it, sad but true. But in reality, it is not as bad as it sounds, we all can create dreams for ourselves, even if they are 2 or 3 small dreams; might not be as grand or important as some or to most people, but dream is one of the driven factors to let us know that we are still living, it is the key to happiness and success.

I think life is like an investment, when we are young we take more risk and get a greater return, but once we get older, we take less risk, which means less return. How much risk you are willing to take is how young you feel at the moment, age has nothing to do with it in my opinion, but you do have to take some risk to get a good return. Nice poem by William Arthur Ward to sum this up, it is called “To Risk”

To laugh is to risk appearing a fool,
To weep is to risk appearing sentimental
To reach out to another is to risk involvement,
To expose feelings is to risk exposing your true self
To place your ideas and dreams before a crowd is to risk their loss
To love is to risk not being loved in return,
To hope is to risk despair,
To try is to risk to failure.
But risks must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.
The person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing is nothing.
He may avoid suffering and sorrow,
But he cannot learn, feel, change, grow or live.
Chained by his servitude he is a slave who has forfeited all freedom.
Only a person who risks is free.
The pessimist complains about the wind;
The optimist expects it to change;
And the realist adjusts the sails.

As for me, I am a realist.