If there is a will, there is a way
At my primary school, I was strictly trained in handwriting. Every day, the class was asked to practice several Chinese characters and then hand them in the following day. Poor characters would be erased by the teacher and a few days later, the work would be given back - students had to fill in the gaps from the erased characters and hand the work in again. I personally, had been writing the same character for three months because it had not reached the high standard of accuracy that was expected by my teacher. At that time, I despised this method and thought this training could only result in everyone writing in the same and unoriginal way and thus add no value to anyone. However, after I graduated from this school, I discovered that even though my peers had gone through this strict practice, they all had different hand writing.
There is always someone saying that your environment moulds a person’s personality, habit, vision and well everything! But according to my own experience, this view is apparently not the whole picture. This is due to the presence of the ego, and sometimes the super-ego; it is the persons themselves that determine what kind of person they are going to be. This is not an illusion of idealism. But the will of an individual can definitely outweigh the effects of the environment. Using the example of the handwriting practice, obviously when you are consciously trying to write beautifully, you can achieve more than when you are forced to passively practice handwriting.
Still, some may argue that in real life, most of the time it is a person’s surroundings that greatly affect them. This cannot be denied, but the explanation I propose is this: most people do not have a strong enough will or drive. I believe that people can plan their own life journey in spite of any obstacles they may encounter. If one cannot, the only reason is that he or she does not have a strong enough ambition or will. Therefore, a clear solution for someone with a disorganised life or poor self-control is a goal, a dream, that one would rather spend their entire life to striving for.
I know someone can continue to say that the formation of an ambition is also affected by the environment, including one’s family, friends, experiences, etc. However, there has to be something innate within a person that they are born with which is not affected by anything else. Personality may be a factor. Even children in an orphanage will have different characteristics. No two people are the same even if they have grown up within the same environment, everyone is unique and has their own personal motivation in life that will inspire them to keep going.
The power of ambition and will also affect how much one gains from an environment or a given situation. For example, if people were all treated the same, there would always be some that were grateful, whilst others would take it for granted and some would complain. The individual person determines what kind of experience or knowledge they can gain from all that is made available to them.
The point I want to make here is that ‘If there is a will, there is a way’. If our environment affords us the way, we still need the will to carry us through our journey. We all have that will somewhere inside us and I believe anyone can choose their own paths in life if we can tap into our own consciousness to set us on the right path.