Alex Liu, Period 1, 10/22/21

“Always have a goal in mind, boy.” My dad used to say that to me (in different variations) every morning as I eat breakfast. But up until recently I never really understood why my dad would take the effort to wake up every morning to say that to me. At one point, I even thought he was saying that just to annoy me. That was because I never realized the importance of a goal. I thought goals were useless. I thought they were just tasks that a person would assign to themselves, kind of like self-created homework. This misunderstanding followed me as I grew up. It was only until COVID washed over the whole planet, trapping me at home with no motivation to do any work whatsoever did I finally grasp the message that my dad was trying to convey to me. A goal, although is a task that you put on yourself, is a path with a grand destination for one to achieve what they desire. Goals are very important as without them, we would just be aimless and tick off our time in waste.


“If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not people or things...”- Albert Einstein


At this current point in time, my goal is to get better at basketball. I’ve loved watching the NBA ever since I was a kid. In every game, I am amazed by how people, who are human just like me, can move the ball around like that. But I have always been bad. Every time I play against my friends, I would lose 9 times out of 10. But my love for basketball far outweighs my hatred for being bad and losing. So, I continue to strive towards that eventual destination, even though there is a chance that I might never make it there.


“There will be obstacles, there will be doubters, there will be mistakes...But with hard work, there will be no limits,” said Michael Phillips.


Despite all the ridicule, the insults, I wake up every morning at 5:30 AM to go to the park and practice. Every night, I would get a few shots in before my mom would get my brother to drag me home. But like what Michael Phillip said, there will be obstacles and doubters. It’s hard to maintain persistence and resilience when the improvement is barely visible, when the results are always the same. For a while, I was my biggest doubter, not the people around me. But, like a machine, I continued to drag myself out there and practice. “Tired is in the mind,” my favorite NBA player, Lebron James, once said. Every talented person is constantly pushing themselves to the limits, so why can’t I?

And now, my hard work starting to pay off. I no longer am missing easy shots when I play, and I even am starting to win games against my “talented” friends. But that’s nowhere near enough. I am aiming to get even better.

Even though I strive towards my goal due to my love for basketball, there is another reason why I push myself so hard. It is because of the world around me. In this society, only those talented are favored, and those who aren’t special, are cast away. The clearest example I see right now is the college admissions process. The students with the most qualifications are accepted, and those whose applications are nothing special are rejected. That is how society works. This factor influences my goal because being good is always better than bad. Being a little more special is always better than being not special at all. That is why I strive so hard to get better at basketball. I want to be special in something that I love while creating a purpose to get up every morning.