GHAMDI If you have ever seen the movie “Contagion” you will probably know that it is about a virus that started with one person then slowly spread to the entire human race. In reality something similar has happened to the world economy. A few years back major stock markets and banks were hit with a devastating blow. Businesses shut down, banks lost money especially in certain countries, and as a result a lot of people lost their jobs. Life went on but the repercussions are still haunting us today. As a result, young and old people are plagued by the inability to find a job or start a business. Yet we as humans have this ability to go on. It is probably a built-in survival mechanism that we were created with. Millions and millions of young people like myself graduate from college and believe that they can conquer the world. When they try to enter the workplace they are faced with reality. Their dreams start to waver but they carry on. This brings me to our dilemma. I was visiting with a friend of mine the other day who was complaining about how it hard is to achieve our dreams in a country which has cultural restrictions. She wants to be a fashion designer and she has the skills for it, but the only way for her to achieve her goal is by opening her own store or at least a custom tailoring shop to help her get noticed, which is the only way is to start a business. The process starts after we graduate from college with a major that a lot of us did not really want because the major we did want was not available. Some of us chose the closest to the major we really wanted hoping that as soon as we graduated we could somehow practice what we loved most. Some of us get stuck in our daydreams mostly because majors are limited in our country and therefore there are not many jobs opportunities or it may be the other way around in that we might have the major but the jobs are not available. Most of us grow up nurturing the talents we have within our nature hoping that someday we will actually be able to practice them. That brings us to the dilemma most new graduates are faced with, finding a steady job to acquire a steady income as a means of supporting ourselves or those around us while we bury our goals and dreams in the hope that we can realize them sometime later. So we apply for a government job even though we know that it may take years before we can get one, and at the same time we apply for a job in the private sector although we know that most of salaries there are low. The dreams start to die for some people, but they stick to their jobs and get on with their lives. However, others for some reason hold on to their dreams and continue trying to achieve their goals. Some people accept the help and the financial support of their family and some take a bank loan while others want to save their own money to start a business. Once they get financial support, they get the chance to live their dreams but even then they may not succeed because the process is complex and financially risky as it all depends on local knowledge and knowing what sells and what does not. My friend is now working at a bank to support her business which she does from home. She is struggling to realize her dream and I can see she is losing hope, but all I tell her is that someday she will make it even if I doubt that this will happen easily in this economy. We both agreed that if none of our dreams came true, we would open a cupcake shop, as we all know you cannot go wrong with that. I guess Marie Antoinette must have had some innate foresight into our time. When faced with the dilemma of her hunger stricken people, her advice was “let them eat cake”. Little did she know that cupcakes are the basis of many successful businesses. — Esraa Al-Ghamdi is a Saudi poet. She can be reached at [email protected] __
