One's Idea of "Life"

Women’s idea of ideal future:

-Beautifully tailored clothes

-Wealthy, handsome, loyal husband

-A 5-star-quality house

-Don't have to work but have enough money to spend on expensive things

-Perfect hair and skin

-Filling life’s emptiness with luxurious things

-Drive a benz

-Living on a high-end street close to busy shopping center (SoHo, etc), have connections with important people

MY dream future:

-I really want to be a career woman. To have a job that’s meaningful for me, that I have passion for. To spend my time doing something I really like and earn money at the same time. I want to contribute establishment to my family, be independent and reliable instead of wasting money without earning it.

-A respectful, full-of humor husband that I have strong connection to.

A husband is a life-partner, someone I will be going home to for the rest of my life. I just want my future husband to be comfortable with me, as I to him. Honesty will be number one rule in our house. We will share every feeling, every tears, every laughter together and not be fake just to please each other. We won’t be hiding and pretending under a high pile of money, education degrees, a big smile, casual lies, and any temporary happiness. We will spend some nights talking until the sun comes out. We will get under each other’s past, fears, insecurities, dreams, weaknesses, secrets, little things that make our hearts wrenched, quotes that resonates deep within our soul, songs that remind us of our teenage years, our favorite childhood memories, and other important things. We will have tea in our balcony and share comfortable silence as we watch the sun goes down. We will paint our house bright and make it feel like home. We will grow old and continue to share stories we’ve never heard even though we spend fifty years open up to each other.

-Living somewhere near the beach in an exotic little house

A place where we don’t need to escape, and everyday would be like a holiday. Somewhere I don’t feel like having to maintain my ego and expected to live the way other people do. Somewhere I won’t have to witness daily fakeness on social medias, where I don’t feel the need to post family photo eating on a fancy cafe just to show people how happy my family and marriage are (while strangers commenting things they don’t mean and talk behind our backs). Somewhere away from people’s judgement, marriage standards, and normalities of living. Somewhere I will be busy living life, instead of busy creating one that’s adored by society.

-Have kids and really spending a lot of time with them, raise them right, getting to know them

Having kids are easy, being a mother is not. Feed them is easy, having emotional bond with them is not. I won’t shower my kids with gifts and money, but I will stay beside them for as long as I can. I don’t wanna be a mother who gives my child a big, cool room but never bother to know my child’s favorite color. I will spend my time listening as my kids babble about their toys, their friends, the story inside their heads, their dreams at night, and what they wanna be when they grow up. I will give them ideas at school projects and compliment them when their work is done. I’ll let them have as many space for creativity and personality development. I will never make my kids feel less of a normal person just because they’re shy or hyperactive. We will learn new languages and cook together. When they’re seventeen and having a hard time and want to be gone, we will talk and I will not judge, because I get through seventeen once. You can talk and pour your heart out about boys, bad grades, a fight with your best friend, your first time of smoking, and I will listen. I will tell you of your importance and we will drive until the sky turns magenta while your heart begins to heal and you begin to grow. We will hug at least once a day. And by the time you’re off to marry someone, we know all about each other, I’ll be your ears when you need to vent about everything and your shoulder when you need to cry.

-I’m down with some struggle in the beginning. It’s actually funner and worthier than being with an already-established-man. Starting everything from 0, building a house together, first jobs, collecting wealth little by little. The truth is, struggle glued people together.

-Help people in need and not be blind to our social condition

I want to have enough money to travel, to see people, to learn new cultures. Visit third-world countries, see India, feed hungry kids in Africa. I don’t want to be stuck-up in the city life with a benz and gucci clothes where no wealth is enough, while people on the other side of the world struggles to find clean water and have to die slowly and painfully because of hunger.

-Grow old feeling content and having no regret

Relieved because I get through life without bringing any harm to other people, have strong connection to people that mean a lot to me, having a life full of stories to tell and lessons to learn. Feel at ease and proud because I got off the roller coaster of life; messy, but worth it.

++ I think the worst future I can think of is living my life as a lie. I wouldn’t dare to imagine myself be stuck on an unhappy marriage but having to pretend to be happy for the rest of my life. I pray my hardest I won’t turn out to have a life like the one in Nannies Diaries, Into The Wild, and Blue Jasmine. It’s honestly worse than anything else, even poorness and poverty.