With innovation, hard work, relationship-building, and a relentless pursuit of success, comes a higher level of jealousy, envy, and scrutiny. It doesn’t matter how good our intentions are. We are often told that we knew what we were getting into. The message is clear: If we wanted to avoid such negativity, we should’ve settled with an average life. But that message goes against everything that our parents and teachers taught us – that we can go as far as we want to go.
I believe that we should continue to pursue our dreams and develop friendships that last a lifetime. We must keep working hard to create products and services through our ideas. If others want to judge us by extraordinary standards, then we just have to live super extraordinary lives.
Though I’m no longer serving in the public sector, I will do my best to help Hawaii and America’s economy through the companies that I’m a partner of. In the spirit of the music events business that I’m involved with, here is an uplifting song “We Don’t Stop” by Kaskade that encourages us to keep doing the best we can in our pursuit of happiness.
JON RIKI KARAMATSU 