"The Butterfly Effect" Movie...

I watched “The Butterfly Effect” yesterday, and I have to confess that it was a well-timed decision on my part to go out and watch the movie.

The basic plot is that a guy realizes his supernatural power to go back to certain moments in his past and to change the memory. Subsequently, when he comes back to the reality, he is in a predicament in which everything around him has changed from the moment thereafter. The movie has a good plot which makes the perspectives powerful, but I just feel that the movie could have been made better by further developing the characters and the dramas. However, what I am trying to write here is not a movie critique, since most of us have an interview coming up soon. Thus, now back to the interviewJ

“There are moments that put you on a certain path in life.”

This is my favorite quote, and I first heard this on ESPN during the CM break between Little League Baseball tournament games. Showing the clips of now famous Barry Bonds, Will Clark, and other major leaguers playing in the tournament as youths, the clip was meant to send a message of how a simple moment can have monumental effects on our lives. And I believe it. The movie, as silly as this may sound, just validated this long-held perspective of mine.

I consider myself very driven, determined, and ambitious. Lack of drive and motivation has not been the problem at all for me throughout my entire life. What has been the problem is that I have constantly felt a sense of guilt and insecurity even when I am doing well in my life. A case in point: When I got my first professional job after college, I was happy. No doubt about it. I was ecstatic about the pay, prestige, and the opportunities that were presented to me. (I received the compensation package that was comparable to I-Banking analyst position.) However, I constantly questioned myself whether I truly deserved it. After all, I was handpicked, out of more than 120 candidates who applied for the single position, by the group of 5 senior executives who personally interviewed me. The thoughts of “what have I done to deserve this opportunity?” and “Would I really excel in this prestigious working environment” were the constant, recurring themes even when I was working there. Also, I kept wondered whether my nationality played a factor in getting hired there. After all, the previous, departing financial analyst guy whom I was supposed to fill in was a Korean-American who received a rave review from just about everyone who had worked with him there. Thus, I questions, wondered, and asked myself about my qualifications. In this country called the United States, which put particularly high level of emphasis on the “self-esteem” and “self-confident” variables, this might not have been too healthy thought for me to have as this could have turned off many people, yet I just could not abandon these thoughts because these thoughts - albeit insecure and counterproductive - have been the primary underlying force behind my drive, the drive to succeed. These thoughts have been the catalyst to push me further and higher to reach more ambitious goals every time I wanted to be content with status quo. In essence, the “fear” factor, deeply inherent in my personality, was my ultimate motivation. I have always had this lingering fear that just wouldn’t go away. Call me a weirdo if you want (well, I will be the first one to admit as much!), but I have had numerous, recurring dreams in which I constantly drowned in some body of water, falling deep in it with an ironic sense of comforts and assurance. And it is only recent that I have realized the implication of the dream. The dream apparently symbolizes my desire to let go of my burdens, the burdens that have carried me through tough times, yet the same burdens that tortured me throughout. The dream was a revelation to me. It meant my subconscious desire to free myself.

There have been many such moments that pushed me to become who I am at this stage of life, that showed me the path of which I am taking at this point, and led to the formative process of my personality and character that make up who I am right now. And I plan to focus on the most salient moments that led me here. Over the past three years since graduating from my undergraduate, I made two life-altering decisions, beyond just changing my jobs or location. And I plan to focus on these decisions to highlight who and what I am. I can’t think of any other means to define myself. These decisions will epitomize the personal and professional makeup of who I was, who I am and who I will want to become.

You may be inclined to ask, Am I still nervous about the interview tomorrow? You bet. As I am writing this, I am already feeling this “butterfly” creeping inside me, and I don’t envision this little thing going away anytime soon.

Do I still have the lingering fear of “what would happen if I make a mistake” and “whether I truly deserve this opportunity”?

I still do. And I accept that these thoughts are inevitable part of me, if not of human nature.

So how am I going to approach with this nerve-wrecking situation if I am still under stress, still under the air of self-insecurity? I mean, how am I going to deal with this pressure?

Well, really nothing special, except that I don’t want to keep drowning in the water.

I will find ways to swim. I really want to. After all, I want to see just how wide this damn water is….



……Who knows, it could be an ocean.