WF: Danny Raven Tan – Look to The Future, Follow The Dream

“Art is self-confident and fearless.”

The passion Danny Raven Tan showed for everything in his life was admirable. The feelings he displayed about his art and even the love for his mother was inspiring. More importantly, the dedication he had to making sure he did what he wanted to do in his life, taking opportunities and “always trying”. This point was one that really stuck out to me. I really liked how he talked about loving to do something so much, that you shouldn’t even need a Plan B. It shouldn’t fail, because you shouldn’t give it chance to fail. If it is ‘unsuccessful’, you should be driven by your devotion to further accomplish that dream.

During the discussion time, Heidi and I were talking about how motivating it was to see his great, optimistic attitude to life even though he had been through so much. We talked about why so many bad things happen to this one person, yet he was able to come out of it better than we come out of one stressful day. Here is Mr Tan overcoming the challenges he faced with being able to do what he wanted to do in life, battling cancer and his mother’s dementia, and even having his best friend who helped him through much of it, die in the end (his dog). Whereas many of us are constantly complain about how our lives are so difficult and hard because we have a test next block. Although there was a point he admitted he thought, “wouldn’t you just want to die?”, he was still able to persevere and “survive” to become an inspiration to all of us. It was a very moving moment that I think helped put his reality into situation for all of us.

His points really helped me realise further the bigger picture life displays. Death. Experience. Strength, faith, wisdom: the key things he felt he wanted to be. I thought the emphasis he put on the fact that “life is to celebrate” because you don’t know if ‘you might get cancer’ or ‘your dog might die’ or ‘you get hit by a car’. And we all laughed, but the actuality is that this is real and these situations can happen to anyone. The fact that he kept reinforcing to ‘try everything’ you haven’t tried before.

“Because if not now, when?”