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If you had to choose between being a person of exceptional talent, but possibly may never be content with life and a typical person of no extraordinary ability but will be content with life, which would you choose?

It's not so much a life decision as it is a driving force behind the paths I could take. From a young age, my parents have pushed me on to a path that could have potentially brought me to becoming someone exceptional. Of course, I meant this in terms of academic excellence. But I also had many opportunities presented to me in the early years. Yet in their pursuit of making me someone exceptional with academics, they took it upon themselves to close all the other doors along the way, effectively barricading all the paths less travelled by. In all other aspects, they insisted on teaching me a life of simplicity, where I can learn to be content with being unremarkable in other areas of my life, as long as I had that one goal, that one destination for which I am headed to.

And then I grew up. I know the simplicities in life, and I know what it means to be content with the little joys. But the premature closing of all the other doors have left its unmistakable print along the path I have thus walked. The way of life made known to me since I was a child encouraged for me to be a typical person, that I should not aspire too loftily, that it was all right to aim at just a little beyond eye level. That I should not focus on other things, or that I was unremarkable in anything else but studies, was a good thing. It was a sign of concentration...plainly put, I've been invested in the one area of which I know I will be able to do well in. But the words of parents are never as their actions, and behind the unspoken rule of "no extremes" in lifestyle, they threw in a strong, resounding message to be different, to be unique, to be "of excellence and of value".

So how was I to reconcile wanting to be typical and to be exceptional at the same time? How was I to know, that their constant whisperings have long planted in me a deeply rooted need to want to be apart from the rest, to stand above the population, to be recognized in a way that no one else can? How was I to know, that at the same time, I was to strive to maintain a clear balance of not aiming too highly for its sheer unrealistic risks? What they have done, they did it for me. They advised me the best they know how, from what they best know about me. But what they never realized is that by closing those doors, I have long lost the opportunity to travel the other paths. I resigned myself to the fact that I was too far gone on this path to turn back, but sometimes, I get a glimpse of the scenery on the other side, and I come to a temporary standstill, wavering as I look at the weather-worn signboards.