How has life treated you?  Each of you may have a different answer at different stages of life.

When I was small, I wished to stand tall.

I asked my teacher, “What will I be?”

Here’s what my teacher said to me,

“Any dream will do.”

I’m sure many of you have been encouraged to do the same: pursuing your own dreams.  But I doubt whether many adolescents have dreams of their own in this day and age.  For those who do, I am wondering whether the dreams contribute to genuine happiness.  The World Happiness Report 2024 sounds alarm on the mental well-being of the youth.  Our youth’s happiness has hit a new low. 

Many teenagers are living with the mundanity of daily routines, and worryingly, lack long-term plans of their own.  With a lack of personal life goals, these youngsters go with the flow, and tend to follow a fragmented path, which is not sustainable in the long-term.  When facing headwinds, they can become disoriented and experience mental breakdown easily.  Their setbacks in life include unsatisfactory academic results, huge pressure from parents and the deprivation of social life.  To our dismay, despair often leads to tragic stories.

Career and life planning is particularly important for our youth.  Gone are the days when we were burdened with making important life decisions, such as choosing university courses or applying for a job, in the nick of time.  Life is a journey and it should be perceived this way. 

Now I have students of my own,

they ask me, “What will I be?”

I say to them, “Whatever will be will be.”

Of course, I am not encouraging them to engage in inaction.  What I am telling them is that they should plan ahead without excessive planning. 

There is a world of opportunities awaiting them.  I usually tell them this: go all out and explore.  Yet nothing should be set in stone to start with.  Nor should they overwhelm themselves with as many experiences as possible.  Remember, it is not the more, the merrier.  They should embrace new opportunities while committing themselves to a few experiences at a time.  Gradually, they will form their own goals, work towards the goals, review them from time to time, form new life priorities and build career resilience.  It’s okay to face hardships.  Don’t be failed by the future but let future find us.  Life planning is a perennial and dynamic process.

To be future ready, we are often told that we should adapt to the emerging AI world.  I am not worried about Gen Alpha’s preparedness for the AI world because they are generally tech-savvy.  What I am worried about is their exposure to the real world experience.  When some youngsters have spent too much time in the virtual world, they only know how to write fragmented sentences as social media messages instead of composing proper emails; or they only know how to customise their online experience without feeling the need to collaborate with others.  Worse still, some of them only know how to input commands in order to generate music and artworks while losing human creativity.  I hope none of these will become the norm or else our future will be bleak.

Our future will be bleak because the youth is our future.  If they thrive, we thrive.  That’s why I encourage NGOs, schools and businesses to work together to organise experiential activities for our youth so as to connect their learning experiences with the real world. Nothing is more valuable than providing them with mentorship and internship.  Giving them a flavour of the workplace allows them to appreciate the beauty of teamwork and gain practical experiences making them more humanistic.  In fact, many of our students are grateful for the enlightening and life-transforming experiences of learning from mentors experienced in the field.  Their experiences are conducive to their career planning.

At the end of the day, we are reduced to a name, or slightly better, a character.  I hope when we reach that note, we can proudly say:

“I lived a life that's full

And traveled each and every highway

And more, much more than this

I did it my way”

These few lines are taken from the song “My Way” by Paul Anka.  “My way” does not denote a solitary journey.  Rather, it means that we, especially our youth, should navigate the world ourselves, have forward planning and chart a course that suits us best.  If we can, Hong Kong will prosper.