Most of my cousins studied abroad. They speak fluent english and often use english terms while speaking. For the record, I live in a country where english is not first language.
Growing up, I’ve always been compared to my cousins. There’s always a competition going on and this “speaking-in-english” thing was included. So, my mother got me a private english tutor when I was in the third grade, she was an university student majoring in english literature. I owe her a lot, because I was already learning present perfect tense, conjugation and conditional if when my other school mates still busy with “this is an apple”.
I love to challenge myself and prove that I can do something other people think that I can’t. Thus, in order to prove that I could also speak fluent english without having to go study abroad, I practiced. How? I translated my english story books into indonesian, I read lots of english book to improve my vocabulary, I watched english movies with english subtitle to improve my pronounciation, I listened to english songs to improve my hearing, I wrote journals in english to improve my writing and I talked to myself to rehearse the conversation. Once I was introduced to the internet for the first time, I signed up for friendship sites to find friends from other countries to further improve my english and start blogging in english to improve my writing skills.
The result : I can speak and write in english well and many chances were given to me just because of that, including the international assignment.
That goes the same with my singing ability, my mother used to say that I always sing off key and in attempt to prove her wrong, I practiced singing all the time. I sang whatever I can sing, I listened to a song and tried to follow the song, I recorded my voice and listened to it again and again until I could sing it on key and with a bit of improvisation.
The result : I was selected for the school choir to sing on independence day, I was a singer and also a worship leader at my previous church (and to add some craziness, I just register myself to my office singing competition – HA! I might not be the best but at least I have the guts to try)
My mother is an excellent cook while I’m nowhere near her. Living in Asia, people often say, “A girl should know how to cook, how come you don’t know how? How can you feed your husband and children?” – tiring huh? Well, to prove that I can. I decided to learn how to cook (I have to be honest that somehow the motivation was also coming because I liked someone and wanted to cook for him) :p) – So, I searched for recipes in the internet, bought the ingridients and then I cooked. I know then that I love to make desserts, cakes and simple western food (because Asian food is too complicated for me).
The result : I’ve made cheese cake, steamed brownies, baked cheesecake brownies, chocolate truffles, pudding, lasagna and spaghetti aglio olio with white wine, mushroom and prawn or simply with pork sausage. I often took the result to the office and shared it with my colleagues to get their review, well, so far the review is always good.
Now, I’m challenging myself to run regularly. One of my goals is to enroll myself in a 5K running competition. No, not for the hype but to challenge myself. I don’t like running. SERIOUSLY. I hate running. I lost my breath easily if I run, I’d rather do any other sports than running. But that’s the challenge, I need to prove to myself that I can actually run, that I can actually beat my limit. Of course with a wise preparation, I don’t just go throw myself to run 5K (I might die) but I try to run regularly at the gym on the treadmill to begin with. It’s super hard and very inconvenient but hey, I need to prove that I can. It’s a goal that I set to also help me with the other goal. If this one works then I would set for another one and another one in larger scale.
Why am I sharing you these stories?
It comes to the title of this post “Jumping Over The Fence” – A fence is often used to limit something. Either to limit the person inside from going outside or from the person outside from going inside. Point is, a fence is a limit that surround something, usually a house or a building, but for this post let’s put it a house. A house is a representative of our comfort, our safe haven.
A fence can be illustrated as a limit, something that keeps us from going out of our comfort. Either it be our own fear of what’s on the other side of the fence or the limitation that other people put so that we won’t go outside the fence.
It’s pretty much like us. We tend to love our comfort zone, our “house” and when we want to step out of our comfort zone we are faced with the fence in form of two things 1) our own fear 2) what other people say / do that prevents us from going out of the comfort zone.
We would never know what it feels like or what is there on the other side if we never get over the fence. Our fear of the unknown might keep us from getting over the fence, what other people say about us and our dreams might keep us from getting over the fence. In that case, we need the courage to jump over the fence. It might take an effort to pull our body up over the fence, not to mention if the fence has sharp points, we might even get hurt. But, all those efforts and pains would be paid of once we get over the fence and see what’s on the other side.
I can’t guarantee that what you see would always be beautiful, in the past, some of my best attempts also fail miserably but it gave me a certain kind of proud feeling that I have the courage to do it anyway regardless of the result. Besides, it’s better to die trying that do nothing at all and keep wondering what if.
