What I Have Learned About Myself After Coming To Taiwan

Please see the previous article, entitled, “Cultural Observations of Taiwan”, for a background.

What I Have Learned About Service

The Taiwanese work longer and harder than their western counterpart, but it seems that westerners have an easier life.  Why is this?

I am reminded of one thing I learned in sales: 

“If you work hard, the job will be easy.  But if you take the job easy, it will become hard.”

The point here, is mainly about the importance of your passion and focus in whatever you are doing.  This is the weakness of the Taiwanese obsession with the high-quality life of leisure.  You see, because of the Taiwanese value of pursuing pleasure and enjoyment in life, the expression of passion in ones service, and the ability to focus on ones work, are two things largely absent in Taiwanese culture.

This observation makes it painfully obvious how important it is to choose a profession that you enjoy.  (I hope that my readers might learn this truth by reading this blog, and thereby save themselves a trip to Taiwan!)

I am a person who has worked long and hard to achieve a career that I can put my whole heart into.  I am now an English teacher in Taiwan.  I love the interaction with the people, my students, and I believe this is the greatest part about my work.  I’m also doing Engineering research, and I write and edit papers too.  I have passion and focus on what I am doing, and as a result, I can work hard and have an easy job. 

Does that make sense?

I fully believe that success comes easily to those who have conviction and passion for what they are doing, and not necessarily to those who simply pursue high-paying, professional careers. 

A functional fit is more important than a respectable form.

The key to success is to find those who need the service that you have conviction and passion about.  If you have to travel to the other side of the world to find those people, it is well worth it!

What I Have Learned About Inner Joy

I had a very unhappy childhood, and I have never been happy in my whole life.  In addition, I’ve never pursued happiness or even believed it was important.  But when I came to Taiwan, I realized that happiness is important.  Although religion and morality are good, I saw that there is more to life than this.  I learned that my life has been way too strict, and too bound up by rules and regulations. 

Living in Taiwan has been very instrumental in teaching me how to loosen up, discover my own happiness and enjoy life to the fullest.  Only after coming to Taiwan did I realize how legalistic I have been, and how much I have depended on my concept of law to give my life meaning, structure and order.  I’ve also learned how my maturity has been impeded because I habitually relied on justifying myself with that same principle of law, instead of facing my inner self, gaining a new hope and a new vision, and demanding something from my life and myself that is above and beyond the law.

God does not want us to be miserable and unhappy.  God certainly has rules and expectations for us, but it is not His will for us to be in spiritual bondage to the law.  God desires us to be liberated from the law, so that we can fulfill the requirements of the law, not out of fear or compulsion, but out of the freedom of our hearts, as an expression of our joy and love for God and our fellow man.

Only after I came to Taiwan have I learned that my own joy and contentment must come first.  Then, and only then, will I have the freedom and maturity to think about achievement and service, etc.

I’ve stopped thinking about what I “have to do”, or what I “ought to do”, and I’ve started to consider what I really “want to do”, and what would make me the most joyful in the long run.  I’ve learned that I must take responsibility for my own life, to make it what I want it to be, and what God wants it to be. 

Since coming to Taiwan, I know that the idea of living out of one’s heart, as described by writers such as John Eldredge, is a basic spiritual law that every person must discover in his relationship with God before he can fully realize the joy of living at peace with God.

Perhaps, for the first time in my life, I can earnestly say now that I am enjoying my life and that I am sincerely thankful and content for what I have.