How Billiard Enabled Me Understanding LIfe

Shooting a ball is easy, but shooting a ball in the intended direction is challenging. To shoot a ball, we just need to hit the cue ball in line with the colored ball, hold the stick with your hand stretched backward and place the other end on top of your left hand. Hit the cue ball with the stick and your mind will shout, “Look, I just hit the ball!” Sometimes, the combination of the balls’ motions create a sequence that allow the colored ball to get into the holes. At that moment, your mind will shout again, “I made it, I successfully got the ball in!” But unless you are that lucky person, playing pool will not be that easy. There is always a way to make you lose the direction of shot. Not a comfortable stance, hitting the cue ball in the wrong points, or simply hit the balls too hard may result in losing the direction of shot, just like we lost the direction of life.

There are many ways to direct the ball’s motion; it’s simple physics. If you want the intended ball to move to the right, you better hit the ball with the cue ball directed little bit to the left. This will allow the horizontal vector component of the force to move the ball to the right motion. If you want to hit the ball straight forward, hit the cue ball right in the middle. If you want the cue ball to roll back after it hits the colored ball, hit the cue ball in the very bottom. I don’t master all these technical strokes, but at least I know how to direct the ball. Unlike pool, I don’t know how to control where my life goes. Is this life controlled completely by the good luck and the bad luck? Has this life been designed by God far before we were born? Is there any way we can change our destiny?

I don’t know how to take control of my life. Maybe life is just unfair. I remember that my father had to work seven days a week and ten hours a day to pay for my brother’s college tuition. Recently, I heard about a billionaire who was willing to purchase a thousand dollar shirt in a store every day. It makes me wonder how unfair this life is. Fortunately, I was lucky enough to receive a scholarship to study abroad. During my senior year in high school, the foundation that sponsored the school offered me an opportunity to study in the United States. This opportunity had enabled my parents to not worry about my tuition fee anymore. Is it sort of a luck, or did I deserve it because of my hard work of being a good student?

I don’t know how to control my life, but if there is a way to direct the balls on a pool table, there must be a way to direct this life. Still, there will be the good luck and the bad luck, but at least we can take more control of our own life.  Do what we are supposed to do, and do it right, with full confidence and courage. Until someday we reach a point where pathways are crossing each other and we don’t know which direction to go.

I didn’t know how to play pool until last summer when I did an internship in Indonesia. Although I learned a lot in that program, my days in the factory were pretty boring. There were two pool tables in the dining hall. I then started to play pool for the first time with my colleagues. I watched how other people played and imitated it. I put much time and effort into that. I learned how to line the balls up to a point where your instinct is the only thing you need to trust.  However, this feeling came with practice, determined by the number of strokes and failures. In this life, we often think that we have experienced enough failures and we don’t want to have those failures anymore. At the very moment when we don’t know which direction to go, we won’t know what we are supposed to do. All we know is what we can do.