money: a crushing disappointment.

When I was a child, I grew up in a loving Christian home.
I went to Sunday school every Sunday, from kiddie church to youth service and care groups.
I was taught many things, many values, and it has shaped the way I live my life, how I view the world.

Of these things, I was taught that the love of money is the root of all evil (1 Tim 6:10).
I was taught that you couldn't serve both money and God (Matt 6:24).
At a young age, this made perfect sense.
Money makes you greedy. Greed makes it hard for you to serve God wholeheartedly, because greed makes it about personal gain, and there will be no sacrificial love.
And it seems sort of true, money corrupts, so I came to the natural conclusion that money is bad.
This has not been a bad thing for me. Until now.

So it is fast approaching the end of my undergraduate degree, and as a soon-to-be arts graduate, there is a need to further my education to be relevant in this money-hungry soul-destroying world.
However, my personal choices of career paths are not legitimate to that of my parents.
I understand that they mean only the best for me, I understand that they want me to live a comfortable life, to have a well paying job, a nice house, a car that doesn't look like it's going to fall apart, to have stable finances such that I would be self-sustainable. Comfortable. I get it.

But it crushes me that at the end of the day, the success of a career in an Asian society is dependent on how much money the job brings in. Why? Why can't people see that sometimes, it's not about the money?

What if I chose a job that gave me more personal happiness and lifetime satisfaction and less money, than a job that has huge payouts but destroys my soul?

Which do you prefer?

Maybe I'm just too painfully idealistic. ):
The discrepancy between my formed values and the way of the world confuses me so much internally.
Now I'm left with, where did it go wrong?

25 Quotes YOU should read before your next birthday

1.  “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by

     the ones you did do."

     (Mark Twain)

2.  Good things come to those who wait.

3.  Carpe Diem.

4.  Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
     (George Carlin)

5.  When the urge to exercise comes upon me, I lie down immediately until it has passed away.

     (Oscar Wilde)

6.  Don't assume malice for what stupidity can explain.

    (Confucious)

7.  “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”
     (Eleanor Roosevelt) 

8.  The more you let yourself go, the less others let you go.
     (Friedrich Nietzsche)

9.  And now abides faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
     (1 Corinthians 13:13)

10.  “Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the 

       really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.”

       (Mark Twain) 

11.  “The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.”
       (Walt Disney) 

12.  “Every artist was first an amateur.” 

       (Ralph Waldo Emerson) 

13.  “The secret to staying young is to live honestly, eat slowly, and lie about your age.”
       (Lucille Ball)

14.  “Man should forget his anger before he lies down to sleep.”
       (Mohandas Gandhi)

15.  “When angry, count to four; when very angry, swear.”
       (Mark Twain)

16.  “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”
       (Margaret Hungerford)

17.  “It is not beauty that endears; it’s love that makes us see beauty.”
       (Leo Tolstoy)

18.  “You are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake. You are the same decaying

        organic matter as everything else.”
        (Chuck Palahniuk)

19.  “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.”
       (Gandhi)

20.  “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most
       responsive to change.”

       (Charles Darwin)

21.  “You know the only people who are always sure about the proper way to raise children? Those 

       who’ve never had any.” 

       (Bill Cosby) 

22.  “Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art… It has no survival value. Rather it is
       one of those things that give value to survival.”

       (C. S. Lewis)

23.  “Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.” 

       (Abraham Lincoln)

24.  “It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.”
       (Friedrich Nietzsche)

25.  “Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the
       imagination and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.”

       (Plato)