The Gold Within : Beyond the Singaporean Dream

Since young, we’ve been taught to aim for the same pot of gold, to work for the Singaporean Dream. We are told to study hard, work harder, and one day, “you will make it.” This pot of gold was painted for most of us in identical colors: an education, a stable career, a respected title, marriage, children, a life path that conforms neatly to societal standards.

And so… we run! We chase! We measure ourselves against others, running endlessly on the same wheel, believing that the prize lies at the end of the path.

One day, I arrived at what looked like this pot of gold. On paper, the picture was perfect: the career, the marriage, the life path that looked about “right.” Yet inside me, it felt hollow and empty. The “gold” outside could not fill the emptiness within me. I was shy of being happy, as though even when everything looked complete, joy never truly arrived the way it should have. Everything I thought would make me feel whole, in fact, did not.

That was when I began to realise:

True gold does not live in titles or milestones.

It glimmers beyond achievements,

in the quiet qualities that carry us through both triumphs and heartbreaks:

Love that deepens beyond romance

Courage that rises from fear beyond comfort

Wisdom refined by loss beyond knowledge

Kindness that endures disappointment beyond reciprocity

In my painting, The Gold Within, the stark black and white mirror life’s extremes, the binaries of successes and failures, gains and losses, what society deems “right” and what it dismisses as “wrong.”Flowing between them is gold. The Gold Within is not the kind of gold we chase outside, but the kind we chose to define for ourselves: the learnings, the lessons, the experiences, the qualities that shape who we are becoming.

It is up to each of us to define our own pot of gold and perhaps the question for each of us is this: what is the gold that truly matters in our own journey of life?

The Singaporean Dream may point us towards a pot of gold at the end of the path. But the truest treasure is not at the finish line. It lies in the journey itself, in discovering, again and again, the gold within.

The gold outside may glitter, but only you can define your true gold.