Time and Chance

Musings from Dennis #65: Time and Chance. I sat with my 84-year-old mother last week and we reflected on my career through the years. She noted that I was not a university graduate yet enjoyed the blessings of a wonderful work life. She then said something I had not heard before. My late maternal grandmother (passed on at age 92, 19 years ago) once told her in peranakan baba patoi (we are a Straits Chinese Peranakan family, a sub-set of the Chinese race here) “Pandai tak lawan Nasib” (Intelligence is not more superior to your blessings). It made me think and wonder and realized King Solomon once said something similar: “The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all”. So if you feel that you have been left behind in your career or have not moved on to where you want to be at, take heart – your success will soon come, and it will! Your ‘nasib’ or blessings will win over any ‘pandai’. Just like Michelle Yeoh, Jamie Lee Curtis, Brendan Fraser and Ke Huy Quan!