Faaqih Hilmy Gozan - the Grit of the Ferris Wheel.

If you want to understand life, take the journey, walk the road. If you should fall, pick yourself up. If you should rise, stay grounded. Don’t forget your humble beginnings, the falls that unraveled your humanity. In all that, keep your perspective long, take the long view of all things. 

In the weekly GenerationGrit this morning, Cara Wong reported about the hardscrabble journey of Faaqih Hilmy Gozan (“Faaqih”), now 26. Go read it. Here I will make it brief. 

It is called Grit of the Millennials because Faaqih tasted hardship early in life. First, his father lost his stable job during the Asian Financial Crisis in 2009. He said, “I didn’t have any pocket money and I was always hungry in school.”

As his father (and family of eight) struggled to make ends meet, Faaqih and his eldest brother had to work to supplement the family. They got creative and sold clothes and shoes to friends.” They made good money going door to door selling, carrying sack of shirts. 

Just when things was on an uptick, tragedy struck. Faaqih’s older brother was then studying mathematics at a German university (sponsored by a relative). In 2015, Faaqih received a call from his brother’s friend breaking the news that his brother had died in an accident. 

“I just couldn’t believe it,” he said. “There were days when he did not feel like eating or talking, but he had to grit his teeth and be “someone who was reliable” for the sake of the family.””

At that time, Faaqih had four siblings. They were from ages 11 to 23 and he had to give tuition to help his family foot the household bills. He said: “Whatever I had, I have to the family. I didn’t really go out, so I didn’t need that much for myself.”

But after he graduated with a degree in civil engineering from NUS and is working now with a construction company, things are looking better.

Despite the many setbacks, Faaqih and a group of friends gave back to society by organising a “yearly conference for Muslim youth in tertiary education called Tertiery Career Conference to encourage them to network with business professionals.”

In addition, he also created a social enterprise “to help charities and social service organisations make better use of their resources through an app called Connectus.”

Lesson? One actually, and it has to do with Ferris Wheel. I will let Faaqih share it as reported. 

“On the difficulties he has faced, (Faaqih) said: "Sometimes I'd think 'not again'.

"But I would always think that this can't be the end - there's got to be something more (to life) out there."

He said that life is not like a roller-coaster, as the popular saying goes, but like riding a Ferris wheel.

“When you're up there, you have to be grateful and thank God for the easy time, but when you're down, you have to remember that things will always look up."

Mm...maybe one can discern a subtle difference between a roller-coaster and a ferris wheel? 

You see, both have their ups and downs, but we often talk about roller coaster as if the highs are our desired aim and the lows are (more or less) to be avoided, something dreaded.

A ferris wheel however is not just about the interconnection, that is, one (high) cannot do without the other (low), like a roller coaster, but more about their joint partnership, an amalgamation, a synthesis to mature and grow us. 

So, the lows are not something dreaded, but a season of self-confrontation, reflection and transformation. A person with a ferris wheel mindset would look back to his humble beginnings fondly, even with nostalgia, rather than look back with abhorrence. 

You see, for a roller coaster, when you are down, you hasten to get that coveted high. You want to get out of it, There is always that eagerness to rush out of it. 

But in a ferris wheel mindset, the valley is like a wise teacher telling us to slow down, learn from it, realign our priorities and deepen our perspective, that is, to reevaluate what we think matters most in life. 

Like what Faaqih said, when trials come, he prays, “not for the hard times to become easier, but for the strength to overcome them. "If you pray for things to be easy, then you will be weak," he reasoned.””

So, a ferris wheel mindset is an indomitable attitude that desires not so much for better, easier times, though they will come, but a stronger, more resilient spirit. It seeks to change the person within, and not so much the circumstances. 

Here, I am often reminded that people succeed for different reasons. Their motives differ. 

A roller coaster life views success more one-dimensional. The lows are considered defeats, and they take it hard and personally. And the highs they strive for is so that they can boast about it to others. It is a form of pay back for ego bruised. 

But a ferris wheel life views the highs from a different perspective, assigning significance beyond the tangible. In other words, they view it from a long term len, that is, one that is less self-focused and more others-centered. 

Ultimately, at different stages of growth, such a person closes the gap between the highs and the lows, and see both as lessons in humility, hope and maturity. More essentially, they see nothing as permanent. They don’t hitch their identity bandwagon (or worth) to successes and failures. Both are means to an ennobled end. 

In other words, they see both as playing an important role to make him or her a better person, that is, a person of resilience and enduring contentment. A person worth emulating.