self study

Growing up, there is an ideal world you want to make for yourself. You dream about it awake, and the heaven seems to come together to make it for you. All you need to do is study hard, do everything the good books say you need to do...and it's all sundry. The environment seem ideal, you have your family firm behind you, the teachers at call anytime you need them, and all the facilities you could care for at your disposal, thanks be to the benevolent leaders.
That is the world. With the world behind you, you couldn't, but think that you will be somebody to reckon with...that the world is yours to have. You are infallible. There is nothing you can't do, with a little bit of work and care.
And so with a jolly pure heart, you go about your business, confident in your stride and up for everything, always in good faith. You think the world is for you to make better, the people are for you to redeem.

You could never believe that you will grow up to be like the bully headmaster, or the idiot cop. You believe with a pure hearth that you won't drink and come home to a violent house that has become your neighbour's, or you won't for god's sake, pile on those fats that is aorund your brother's waist. And you couldn't in your wildest dream think that you will treat people unequally or that you will be your boss's yes man...that you will use office money and adjust public reources to fill up the dent you have created in your bank balance because of your lavish tendencies or to satiate your greed...You could never be corrupt, because when you are so good, you never need be corrupt...the world will fall on your feet...You are invincible
However, reality strikes home soon enough though...You forget your way and can't see through a maze that the world creates. You loses your sense, your will, your faith and everything else...You see the working of the world and you know there is only so far you can get, going on your own way. Your way must follow other's, all too often. You realize that every person is just like you when they begin; true, honest and sincere in their effort. It is the world and its murky ways that changes them.

Before you know, you are doing everything that you could never imagine doing when you are on the fence and watching. The books are good, so they have allowed people to wield them to their convenience. There is a norm that has come to be in the organization that you have just joined long before you were even aware of its existence. It suits the way of the people in there. So they let it be, and expect you to do the same.

Things that were clear, good and bad, dos and don't, right and wrong suddenly becomes just a little murkier. It is no longer the same world that you watched from your privileged ring-side seat all this while. When you are in, everything's grey. There is no scruple, no qualm, no vision...it is nonsense, it pays you to be so. Be on the right side of the powers-that-be, learn to scratch the right spots an lo! you can do all wrong and yet always come out on top.

But these are exactly the times, when you got to look deep inside you, to see where you are wrong, where you need to hold your own, look out for the times when you are on your own, to be true to your core. It's time for introspection, self-study.