Musing

An interesting thing happened today.

I met this mother accompanying her daughter who was going for the interview for admission into medicine. She stopped by the bench where I was studying with her two daughters, the younger one being all of six years of age.

They had some time to spare. While the interviewee-to-be was engrossed in reading and preparing, the mother started talking to me a little. The conversation picked up some more when the girl went off for the big event. It turned out that the mother was quite anxious about her girl's studying as she (the girl) tends to have high expectations and stresses herself. Which in turn stresses her mother. So her (the mother's) greatest wish is for the child to graduate as soon as possible and start working. She's all for the girl to lighten up. And preferably not choose something too stressful. To which I told her she had better be prepared if the child does get into medicine. Now, isn't that the greatest understatement! Well well. If the girl really does want it, she should just go for it. And hopefully she learns to manage herself better. Anyway, she'll have all her classmates to support her.

That was actually not the most interesting part. What left me thinking was what the girl said when she came back from the interview. As the family was leaving, she told her mother that she was asked what was the proudest moment of her life.

Now, that is a question worth thinking about. What was the proudest moment of your life? I've been asked what was the greatest failure in my life (too bad, I'm not telling you what I said in reply) but I've never thought about the proudest event. Ever.

And so I started thinking about that (while staring at my Drug Discovery notes, haha). I think to be proud of something necessarily involves working really hard for it. That's why it means so much when you get it (or don't get it, but feel really good about the effort).

I think I've worked hard at quite a few things in my life, but honestly, I don't think I can pinpoint that one single proudest moment of my life. The crowning glory. The wow-yes-i-did-it thing. Somehow when I think about it this way, what I worked at seemed ok-worthwhile but not exploding-fireworks-spectacular. There are things which I am very glad to have done and made me really happy. But these are just not that one proudest thing.

And so I think I should try hard to find that one thing, that one moment. And I'll let you know when I do.

lol. I'm glad no one asked me that question before I thought about it.