Yeh Yeh's House 2

Achieving Dreams and the Sacrifices Involved in Achieving Them

I have continued reading Yeh Yeh's House by Evelina Chao. I read about the sacrifices Evelina made to achieve her dream which was to be a violinist. While reading, I thought of whether or not achieving dreams are worth the sacrifices. This post is similar to my previous post, for they are both about the "weight" and value of certain things as compared to others.

Evelina's dream was to become a violinist as the text said: "I was going to play music, no matter what, for the rest of my life... music was my sanctuary as well as my way out." To achieve her dream, she chose to sacrifice her chance to visit her grandfather. When I read this, I tried to determine which of the two I found more important, and as I have said in my last post, to me, family is always the most important. However, I cannot say that Evelina was wrong to choose her career over her grandfather. When I say this, I do not mean that her grandfather is worth less than Evelina's career, instead, I am saying that sometimes we have no choice but to make such sacrifices. At the time, Evelina probably thought that her career and her studies at The Julliard School (a talent university in New York) was more important and worth the sacrifice. 

I feel guilty and conflicted, but I know that when I am older, I will probably have to make a sacrifice like the one Evelina did. This is because sometimes, no matter how important what needs to be sacrificed is, it will still be sacrificed in order to keep the other. There are many reasons why something important would still be sacrificed, for some things (regardless of its value) simply won't work out (timing, cost, personal issues, etc.), and others might be important but at the moment is less important than what is on the other side of the "scale". I hope that I will never have to choose between my family and my career, but I know that is probably wishful thinking because there are simply too many scenarios where such a choice would have to be made.

I think that when it comes to dreams vs important sacrifices, it really depends on how much the dream means to you and how many serious problems would occur without the important sacrifice. For me, I would rather stay safe than try to achieve a dream that needs many important sacrifices. Because if I sacrifice all the important things, then realize I don't want to pursue my dream anymore, it would be much too late. 

I think that people make sacrifices that shouldn't have been made because they miscalculate how important the sacrifice is. Or they may have had a temporary desperation to achieve that specific dream, therefore forgot to determine the value of the sacrifice. I could say that Evelina should not have chose her dream over her family (as she repeatedly does), but it would be unfair because no one knows the future. Evelina would never have thought her grandfather would die (for in the book it was said that her grandfather always maintained good health), especially not from suicide. This again goes back to my last post, how I said that some things/people/places are taken for granted and their importance is not realized until it is too late. Evelina probably thought that since her grandfather had good health, he would probably still have many years ahead of him, therefore she could push back her trip to China since she still had many years to visit him. However, life is life, things come unexpectedly, some good, some not, and her grandfather's death was unexpected but not good. 

So in the end, there truly is no right choice, it all depends on the person and their situation.