The best thing you can give someone,
including yourself, is a chance
Minh Tan
This is basically my number one life philosophy. I not only believe in it completely, but I also find myself wishing that someone would have given me a chance at this or that more often in my life than I’d care to recount. I live in a rather traditional province where old values, whether discrimination or just resistance to change, stay firm. I’ve wished people would have given me a chance at everything from work to love, and all the small things in between. When they haven’t, I’ve sometimes been able to give myself a chance by doing things like demonstration projects to show my skills. With something less tangible like love, giving myself a chance meant trying again, where if I hadn’t made the move, giving myself the chance, essentially, I would not have succeeded in convincing a girl for a date.
The giving “yourself” a chance subordinate clause in this quote is very important because in life, a lot of times, only you can give yourself that chance at something. Things aren’t often done for you, sit waiting for you, or such. You’ll have to take that first step, take that risk, commit to something and make sacrifices for it, to give yourself a chance to succeed. That may be things like going to university, trying a new sport people didn’t think you’d be good at, or business venture, or whatever. Only you could give yourself that chance in those circumstances. It, too, would be the best thing you can give yourself, in my opinion.
Finally, I should state that “chance” here could also mean second chance, third chance, or however many chances are applicable. That may not be logical, like how love will make some give their partners untold number of chances at whatever. That’s the tolerance that relationships begets you as I had mentioned in another quote previously. Still, it is technically a chance you’re giving them, so this quote is as much about opportunity as forgiveness… and that’s two BIG things to put together in a quote, which is why it’s my favourite and number one life philosophy.
As a side note for the record, this is the fifth year anniversary of my blog. 1002 posts, 14.3 million page views, with at least twice as much if you count the stuff stolen from here and posted elsewhere with their download counts in the millions visible! I’m fine with that, though. I created this blog to generate content that would make people happy, have fun, learn and so on. If they did so via another site, it’s still ultimately my work and my impact. Had the other sites not stolen it, those people would have found it here and ended up with the same result. I’m going to call my experiment a success and continue on. I’ve got the domain registered for 9 more years just recently. Here’s to a lot more good blogging and thank you to everyone who has made use of my work! 🙂
Digital Citizen 