adminOprah Winfrey said this in her graduation speech.
“Passion will bloom when you do what you love.”
As Winfrey puts it, many people believe that passion comes from doing what they love and ‘enjoy’. So, when someone is thinking about choosing a job, I often advise, “Choose a job that allows you to do enough of what you love (what you enjoy).”
However, there are claims to the contrary. Passion grows when you do what you believe is important, not what you like, and what is worth the challenge. Some advise that if you make a job that you love, not only will you not enjoy it, but you will end up hating it.
For the past 53 years, I have been walking on the single road of baseball, leaving the field and moving to Laos, where I am unfamiliar, and living a second life.
For 44 years, how much did you struggle and run on a barren and dry ground where you couldn’t survive unless you became the best in the field… What on earth did you struggle like that for?
I want to talk to young people and young students. When you’re young, you have to do what you enjoy, have fun, and do what you love. However, as you grow older and become an enlightened adult, you will realize that living a worthwhile and meaningful life is truly walking the path of happiness.
My last life, which has been running on a single road called baseball for the rest of my life, is not the best, but when I live the first step of living as an old man with value and meaning, I am living with gratitude every day with a feeling of happiness that I have never experienced before.
The place that started like that was the first time I’ve ever been to Southeast Asia, and I went down to Laos, the most poor and poor, and spread baseball. It’s been 10 years since I went down to Laos and spread baseball. As I started playing baseball with them, I also had a small dream.
I also spread baseball to them with a small hope in Southeast Asia where no one goes (just as missionary Philip Gillett spread baseball to Korea in 1904). Frankly, everything was impossible and poor. It was an environment that seemed unacceptable to baseball, but I started playing baseball with them recklessly to give them a little hope. Things that started like that finally opened the first international baseball tournament in Laos in 10 years.
Things that started one by one like step by step over the past few years are finally less than a month away from the international baseball tournament in Laos that I only dreamed of. No one thought that international baseball would be held in Laos. Even myself, can an international competition be held in Laos? I was dubious.
As time passed, I gradually began to hope for myself and to have a dream. What I felt when I started this job was a ‘strong will’ to ‘do it’. With doubt, nothing can be done, and nothing can be done. Then, once I had the idea to take on the challenge, I decided to draw more specific blueprints.
In order to open an international baseball tournament, the first thing that was urgent was a baseball field that could hold an international tournament. When I think of running around for years to build a baseball field in Laos, I’ve been to a lot that I can’t really say. And secondly, it is my earnest thought that the international baseball tournament must start first in Laos.
Because the Indochina Peninsula is surrounded by Laos in all directions, it is a key point of transportation. Laos is a place where you can come by bus as much as you like via land, and you can also come by plane. Since Laos is an important transportation hub, it is in a geographically good location where you cannot go to a neighboring country without crossing Laos. That is why it is a country where you can easily and easily come to an international baseball tournament. 안전놀이터
10 years later, what started with the belief that ‘one day that dream will surely come true’ eventually became a reality, and from February 24 to 26, 2023, the first international baseball tournament was held in Laos.
Had I been alone, this kind of miracle could never have happened and never happened again. Getting here was only possible with the help of so many people. In order to repay their gratitude, I will do my best in my position and hold hands with them to run to the end.