Lying in front of me is a brown sparrow flapping its furry saddle brown wings with all its strength- even the sound it makes when hitting the ground shouts its pain, its despair, and its eagerness to fly. Behind the sparrow is a red trail of its blood from hopping to the rosebush with its injured claw. The way the sparrow shivered shows its fragile hope and its fear to be wounded again.

Silly as it may seem, the sparrow wanted fly into the sky’s embrace and fill its eyes with the bluest of all blues; while it learnt perfectly well from its peers that the sky never belonged to sparrows who knew nothing more than hopping along tiles and pavements.

In some ways the sparrow reminds me of us humans: we all have dreams that seemed insane in others’ eyes. The beggar across the street spent his days and nights hoping to become a millionaire who no longer has to worry about filling a growling stomach; the 200-pound girl lying on the couch with a bag of potato chips pictured herself wearing a set of size 0 lingerie like those runway models on TV; the middle-aged taxi driver who just dropped a student off sworn to himself that he would never be late to lectures if only he could attend university. It isn’t rare to see others laughing at their unrealistic goals, but who are we to say that these hopes wouldn’t come true?

Go big or go home. If you’re not satisfied with your situation, do something and make a change. Fly, sparrow, when the ground is foreign to you.

You can never satisfyingly smile to yourself on the same level and expect to go big. When you’ve finally realized a dream, the next thing you have to do is to set another goal and chase after it. How can a bird learn to fly when it’s hiding within its comfort zone that lies within its nest on the tree branch? How can you change a situation you dislike when you choose to bear the sadness inside you instead? Sometimes when you endure an unpleasant state for too long, day by day, it becomes your life.

Dream, when you feel that passion burning. Fly, when you have the wings.
And stop worrying about the possible failures when there’s hardly anything that couldn’t be mended.

Like the sparrow, you may have been hurt for chasing your teenage dreams, you could perhaps smell that blood from your sore leg, yet that only symbolizes that you’ve overcome a long path and now you are more experienced, more sophisticated. You are the only person who could get in the way and hold yourself down. Once you’ve aimed for something, never settle for anything less.

Chasing dreams is never easy. Leonardo Da Vinci started off with learning to sketch eggs for days and had withstood such boredom; in the end he became one of the most famous painters in history. Qing Dynasty writer, Cao Xueqin’s family had their properties confiscated and lost all their wealth, but Cao got inspired and wrote a monumental literary work, Dream of the Red Chamber right after such misfortune.


Run, until you cross the finishing line.

Imagine your life as a canvas and your actions as paint. Everything you do leaves a mark on your painting of life and by the time you finish the piece of art, what do you hope to see? Draw on while you are still in your golden days, so that you’ll leave no regrets when you could no longer hold a brush with your trembling hand. Keep your brush moving; keep perfecting your own painting. There’s no such thing as a flawless artwork that stuns everyone, and there are no adventurers who never trips over. It’s okay to make mistakes, as art need not be beautiful, but only to be meaningful.

Let not your past haunt you. Fear not the stumbles, my dear. Be the first sparrow that flies.