Q: The curious case of Miss Berry from Ireland

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Title : Q: The curious case of Miss Berry from Ireland
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news-today.world | Hi guys, I am at a lost here and thought I would you turn to you guys for some advice. I had a visitor from Ireland this week - it was a young lady from my mother-in-law's village in Ireland. I had met her earlier this year and her family have been very kind to my elderly mother-in-law, taking good care of her since all of her children are in the UK. So when she asked if she could stay with me for two days in London whilst she attended an event, I agreed immediately. So let's call her Berry, since I know she loves the music of the Cranberries. She had just completed her degree and had been studying abroad - but she has since returned to Ireland and is working in a lowly paid job that she is vastly over-qualified for. When talking about the topic, her mother actually got pretty defensive and said, "Berry had been working so hard at university, so it's nice for her to take a break after graduation and do a job that she enjoys - the people are really nice there as well and it's a great working environment." But during our conversations, Berry admitted to hating that job which she found very dull. She then retreated to the excuse, "I was brought up in the countryside, I'm just not the kind of person who is super ambitious when it comes to my career - it's not me."

Now I didn't quite know how to react to that - I don't think I knew Berry well enough to criticize her attitude but I couldn't help but feel that something was wrong. She was highly educated and intelligent but for whatever reason, felt like she had to return to that part of Ireland where she grew up and find work there; but of course, in that part of Ireland, opportunities are very limited for young people. Those who are ambitious and highly educated would move to Dublin, London or further away in search of better opportunities to further their career. Since I don't know Berry that well, I am happy to leave it at that because she wasn't particularly asking me for career advice. Then something else happened at about the same time - Youtube knows that I like videos about learning languages so they would suggest various videos that I might like. I watched this video made by a Dutch Youtuber - he claims to speak 19 languages, not all of them fluently of course and he goes around Amsterdam looking for random tourists of different countries to practice his languages with to see if he can impress them by speaking their language. I've seen better Youtube videos on the topic (I am not embedding them as I don't think they're actually that good), he's clearly more fluent in some of his languages than others, but I got into an argument in the comments section of that video.

The comment that sparked off this heated argument was, "Polyglots will always be employed." And of course, I couldn't resist jumping in - the video featured our Dutch Youtuber working in a bar and being able to serve the tourists in a range of languages from Russian to German to English, but I pointed out that people who work in bars don't earn much and even if they have a good night in tips, they still earn a lot less than say an engineer, a doctor or a lawyer. That triggered off a lot of hateful comments directed at me: I was accused of being materialistic and greedy, I was told that when I die, I cannot be buried with my Mercedes Benz (which is ironic as I don't even have a car, I live in central London and traffic is pretty bad). I've dealt with the topic of poverty quite a lot this year and whilst many people claim that money cannot buy you happiness (oh I beg to differ), the lack of money can certainly cause you a lot of misery, frustration and problems. There's really nothing romantic about being poor - poverty never brought anyone happiness per se, some people know how to make the best of a difficult situation and they have managed to create happiness whilst facing their daily battles. Some people make the mistake of assuming that these people are happy because they are poor, rather than acknowledging the fact that even people in the most dire circumstances can try to find happiness somewhere in their lives. Please watch the Youtube video below as a case study.

It is obvious that these Somali refugees living in the refugee camp in Kenya are struggling with daily survival, yet there is a joyful scene in the classroom where the 15 year old refugee Noor is leading his class in a sing along and the whole class seem to be quite joyfully singing. Are the children happy? Well yes and no - at that very moment, when they were singing together, sure they look happy and seemed to be enjoying the activity of course. But if you were to watch the whole video, you would understand how desperate the conditions are in the refugee camp and how school is the one thing that gives them focus and a sense of normality there. Yes some poor people, like those refugees in the video, can still find a way to be happy in their everyday lives - but does being poor make them happy? Let's put it this way: if we gave each of these refugees US$100,000, would any of them choose to be in the refugee camp? Hell no, they would get out of there are soon as you hand them the cash to move to a much better place. Yet of course, many people get extremely defensive about being poor, they would turn around and accuse me, "hey are you looking down on poor people? What makes you think you're better than the rest of us just because you have more money than us?" Well, my money allows me to do a lot of things that poor people can only dream about - but it goes way beyond being able to afford exotic holidays or buying nice clothes.

Let me put this to you: what if a family member gets struck down with a rare form of cancer and the medical bills start stacking up? In that situation, then you are literally earning money to keep this family member alive, because without the vital treatment, s/he will die. If you're in a situation like that, you already have a lot on your plate to worry about when dealing with someone in your family fighting cancer - you really don't want to have to worry about money on top of all that emotional stress. Or how about this situation: your brother is involved in a car accident and is seriously injured - he faces the prospect of spending the next six months in a hospital and won't be able to work for quite a long time. They have two young children, his wife isn't earning enough money to support the family and pay the medical bills - wouldn't you like to be able to help solve their problems by at least saying, to your brother "please don't worry about the money for now, I've got enough to help you out. Just focus on getting better." And what about my friend Ken who is now studying to become a doctor - sure that's a noble ambition but medical school is very expensive: fortunately his father has a very good job and can afford to support Ken whilst he is in medical school. Ken's dream is to become a doctor, until he graduates and starts working, this is a rather expensive dream that has been bankrolled by his father. If Ken's father was poor, he would have to say, "sorry Ken, we can't afford to put you through medical school, it's too expensive."

Being rich enables you to do a lot more than buy nice things for yourself and have a comfortable life: with that money, you can take care of the people in your family, the people you care for. That's one thing that poor people can't do - the poor man may be able to hold his sister's hand and give her his shoulder to cry on when she gets her cancer diagnosis, but he can't pay for the vital cancer treatment that is going to save her life. Likewise in the second scenario, the poor sibling may be able to visit the injured brother in the hospital after the car accident everyday, but is ultimately powerless to do anything to solve the pressing financial problems they face. Oh being poor renders you powerless in so many situation when you really want to help but the only solutions that will work cost a lot of money. So if you're a poor person with no children and say your parents are no longer alive (or if they are at least able to take care of themselves financially), then by all means go ahead and do what the hell you want - be a beach bum who is penniless and spend your days sunbathing on a sun-drenched beach on some idyllic, remote tropical island. People who do choose that kind of lifestyle will point to people like me in the corporate world and mock me, "look at all that stress he has to suffer daily at work, he's going to work himself to an early grave like that whilst I get to wake up everyday when I gently open my eyes, not when the alarm clock goes off." There's a price to pay for being a bum and if you're willing to render yourself penniless by choice, then that's a rather selfish decision.

Whilst we're on the topic of polyglots going viral on Youtube, I'm sure many of you have seen the video of Thuch Salik - the Cambodian boy at Angkor Wat who is selling souvenirs to tourists in a number of languages. He isn't fluent in these languages of course, he seems to have managed to memorize a range of phrases in a number of languages which enables him to explain the prices of the items he is selling. Having said that he is pretty fluent in English and Mandarin, which are probably the two languages he uses the most with the tourists there. This is a clear example of how people from poorer countries overcome loads of obstacles to try to earn more money - this kid (and his family) aren't trying to opt for a simple life in one of the most beautiful parts of Cambodia by selling souvenirs to tourists: everyday survival is a struggle, to make enough money to get by and put enough food on the table. If you were to look at the abject poverty that many Cambodians actually live in, then you will forgive me please when I roll my eyes when naive white people paint this kind of idyllic existence they have, free of the stresses of the corporate world and enjoying some kind of bliss that only a simple life can bring. Whilst this Cambodian kid's language abilities are impressive, what he is doing is pretty common amongst the people selling souvenirs in a poor country like Cambodia. If given the chance, of course he wants to go to university and then get a good job so he can support his parents - he wouldn't choose to work like that for the rest of his life as he would want his parents to be comfortable when they get old.

Going back to my friend Berry, I have a feeling that she is at that stage in her life where she continue working in her current dead-end job where her brain isn't challenged much or she could try to put her degree to use and get a far more challenging job. Yet somehow, she is hiding behind the excuse of 'I am not the kind of person who is very ambitious when it comes to my career' excuse. You see, if she outright just said, "I'm lazy" or "I don't like to work hard" - it makes us look bad to others. Yet somehow in her head, claiming that she is "not ambitious" seems to be a perfectly acceptable to her - I didn't quite know how to react to that as I thought it was a rather strange thing to say. It's like admitting to having an STD, even if that was indeed the case, we tend to be rather discrete about disclosing that kind of information rather than wear it as a badge of honour. She made that statement with the same kind of nonchalance as she would with a statement like, "I'm right-handed" or "I grew up listening to the music of the Cranberries", like there was an element of 理所当然 (inevitable and correct, as it should be) to it. Mind you, had it been my nephew who came up with such a statement I would have scolded him on the spot and given him a stern lecture! But since it was Berry, I decided it was not my place to reprimand her - that was between her and her parents and no, I was not going to cross that line. I decided to mind my own business and keep my mouth shut.

Nonetheless, given the kind of hateful comments I encountered on Youtube on the issue of making money, I realized that Berry's attitude was actually a lot more common and widespread than I thought. So this is when I want to turn it over to you my readers and ask you for your opinion please. Why is Berry lacking ambition despite having obtained a good degree from quite a respectable university? I think she's quite capable and intelligent - she certainly isn't stupid, she wouldn't have gotten through that degree otherwise. It is one thing to lack ambition if you're truly stupid and all you can do are dead end jobs, but what is the missing ingredient that makes an otherwise intelligent young person lack any kind of ambition and then still feel that it is completely okay to be unambitious? Is this attitude really widespread or does social media like Youtube simply attract the wrong kind of weirdos? What about you - are you ambitious or are you by your own admission not the ambitious type? If you are ambitious, why do you want to achieve so much? What is your motivation to be this ambitious? Do you know someone like Berry? Should I have said anything to her or did I do the right thing? Leave a comment below please, many thanks for reading.

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