Paradox & Inspiration 118: Mother Teresa's Anyway Poem

Mother Teresa's Anyway Poem

People are often unreasonable, illogical and self centered;
Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives;
Be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies;
Succeed anyway.

If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you;
Be honest and frank anyway.

What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight;
Build anyway.

If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous;
Be happy anyway.

The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow;
Do good anyway.

Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough;
Give the world the best you've got anyway.

You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and your God;
It was never between you and them anyway.

Paradox and Inspiration 117: Poor versus Rich

"Poor and most middle-class people believe “If I have a lot of money, I could do what I want and I’d be a success.” Rich people understand, “If I become a successful person, I will be able to do what I need to do to have what I want, including a lot of money.”

~ T. Harv Eker Quotes from Secrets of the Millionaire Mind

Paradox and Inspiration 116: Nothing else Matters at 16?

News reported that in the UK and US, it has become common for mothers to give their teenage daughters breast implants as a birthday or graduation present.

Despite being warned by plastic surgeon and child psychologists that such moves were unwise as even at age of 16 or 17, the breasts had not matured enough and that there would be a lot of psychological repercussions, and cosmetic surgery was a dangerous way to resolve teenage anxieties, many mothers and daughters still believed that girls got to have breasts to be successful, as every other person seen on television had implants, and the best way to prevent any “hang-ups" about looks and boost one’s self confidence and esteem was to get a boob job.

Paradox and Inspiration 115: Lessons from Morrie

Tuesdays with Morrie, An old man, a young man, and life’s greatest lesson
by Mitch Albom

"Chase the right things in life, devote yourself to loving others, to the community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning."

"Find out what’s good and true and beautiful in your life right now. Looking back makes you competitive. And age is not a competitive issue."

"Owning things is good. More money is good. More property is good. More commercialism is good. More is good. More is good. We repeat it – and have it repeated to us – over and over again until nobody bothers to even think otherwise. The average person is so fogged up by all this, he has no perspective on what’s really important anymore."

"You know what really gives you satisfaction? Offering others your time."

"Because I work among the rich and famous, I convinced myself that my needs were realistic, my greed inconsequential compared to theirs. This was a smokescreen."

"Don’t I have enough pain and suffering of my own? Of course I do. But giving to other people is what makes me feel alive. Do the kinds of things that come from the heart. When you do, you’ll be overwhelmed with what comes back."

"When Morrie was with you, he was really with you. He looked you straight in the eye, and he listened as if you were the only person in the world."

“I believe in being fully present.”

"When someone wants to get ahead of me in the traffic, I would raise my hand, as if I was going to make a negative gesture, and then I would wave and smile. Instead of giving them the finger, you let them go and you smile. A lot of times they smiled back. I don’t have to be in that much of a hurry with my car. I would rather put my energies into people."

Paradox and Inspiration 114: Diseases in Developed Country

The mention of the city-state of Singapore conjures up images of modernity, remarkable cleanliness, admirable disease-free environment, safe and healthy living.

Not sure about you, but I believe many foreigners find it hard to reconcile the existence of life-threatening diseases and viruses such as mosquito-borne dengue and Chikungunya diseases, hand foot mouth, bird flu, SARS with a modern setting like Singapore.

Life is full of ironies, isn’t it?

Paradox and Inspiration 113: When Parenting is Reduced to Numbers

Parenting is hard. Being a stay-at-home-mum is freaking scary. A big part of the reason is because we do not get a report on how well we are faring in this herculean task, what have been done correctly and wrongly, how much more we should do…

I do not ask to be a perfect parent, but I need to know if I've been a bad parent and how far I am from being a good one. I want to know if giving up my job to be with them is a correct decision, I want to know if what I've done is all worth it. The same principles of performance and reward in the corporate environment cannot be applied in this enormous parenting venture. At work, we have performance indicators to tell us how much have been achieved, how far we are from our targets and goals. At the end of the year, we get appraisal from the bosses.

Like every parent, I want my children to be healthy, happy, and successful in every way, I want to be a key contributor to that end goal. I can so easily forget that "Sucess of loving is not the results, but the loving itself." I must not reduce parenting to numbers – good health reports, good grades, good behaviour, good conduct, good reports from the school, but that feeling of insecurity just creeps in when you know that even if their school report cards record flying colours or they topping the class, it still doesn't mean I have been a good parent.

How to measure the emotional aspect and happiness of my children? Their smiles, their laughter? What a poster I saw said crystal clear - "For a child, love is spelled as T.I.M.E". Perhaps, by just being with them, offering a word of encouragement or a hug of assurance of my presence counts a hundred times more than those endless nights of coaching for school exam.


"The mother-child relationship is paradoxical and, in a sense, tragic. It requires the most intense love on the mother's side, yet this very love must help the child grow away from the mother, and to become fully independent."
~Erich Fromm~

Paradox and Inspiration 112: Embrace or Eradicate Internet Anonymity?

The anonymity of the internet is a double-edged sword.

Peeking into this paradoxical topic, we learn how anonymity emboldens users to be culprits of hatespeech, financial scams, disclosure of trade secrets and exposure of personal information or secrets, astroturfing, online harassment, cyber bullying, child pornography, vicious behaviour, stalking, personal threats, stalking, and even extortion among other illegal activities, you just name it. The ferocious onslaught of internet predators and cyber crime is unimaginable, extremely dark.

Yet, we long know that the internet’s anonymity sets the basis for upholding and protecting the freedom of speech effectively. Just think of the knowledge we have acquired through this medium, the many more ways to connect, socialize and communicate than ever before. Anonymity provides people an outlet for their opinions, even the most sensitive and controversial ones. Cyber defamation law requiring verification of the user’s identity in online activities will curb freedom of speech, which depends on anonymity in some cases to shield the weak from abusive powers and for truths to be exposed without the fear of being punished.

So where do we go? Envelop or outlaw internet anonymity?

Paradox and Inspiration 111: Paradox Parenting

This paradox parenting perspective might surprise you.

If disciplining your children is driving you insane, what James Lucas teaches in his article "Paradox Parenting" might help you formulate some strategies to overcome your struggles.

Paradoxes identified by James are - expectations versus tolerance, justice versus mercy, teaching through values versus results, authority versus shared power, "The Way" versus freedom, protecting their innocence versus exposing them to reality, keeping a distance versus connecting at the soul, conditional love versus unfailing love.

Paradox & Inspiration 110: Excellence Redefined

The word "excellence" gets a new meaning today.

If there's one thing that I had craved for badly in my life and the lives of my children, it has to be "excellence". I yearned for it; I aimed for it; I planned and worked for it; I strived towards it; I prayed for it; I had been disappointed because of it; I had been troubled over it... For me, the end-result of having achieved excellence in life was always images of "success", "full marks", "A", "100%", "best", "number one"...

Pastor shattered that definition and revealed a fresh new perspective for it.

The spirit of excellence enables one to do his or her very best, to give hundred percent, and to leave the results to God. So, my best may not be someone else's best! A 50/100 may be someone's best, while a 100/100 may just be someone's partial effort. These statements are so very straightforward and familiar, but yet have never struck a chord of understanding in me!

Truth sets people free. All I need to do is to present my all and best in everything, and even if the results are far from perfect, I can actually say with good conscience that I have achieved excellence in my life! How wonderful is that!

Inspiration & Paradox 109: When Only Staying Alive Seems to Be Enough

For the longest time, I’ve wanted to write about Jason’s quite out-of-the-ordinary encounter at the hawker centre.

There he was, having lunch with a friend at a hawker centre when a very normal looking middle-aged man came by at their table and said he was hungry and asked if they could buy him lunch. Not sure if he was one of those rogues or ne’er-do-wells who preferred begging to working, they just ignored him. Moreover, he didn’t have the slightest look of an impoverished, filthy beggar.

It was just a little while before he noticed Jason’s friend had stopped eating and asked if she still wanted the remaining rice and fish soup. And in the next few moments, he was busy helping himself to the left-over. Guilt-stricken, Jason offered to buy him a new lunch. However, he declined and requested if Jason could buy him a drink instead, breaking out in sweats and explaining the peppery soup was too spicy for him. He got his drink, of course.

I couldn’t be more stunned when Jason finished his story. Couldn’t the man find something less demeaning to do with his life? What had reduced him to stooping so low? What could make him push back all dignity to publicly eat what’s left over on a plate by a stranger? It can’t be just the will to stay alive, can it?

Inspiration & Paradox 108: He Wants Our Yesterday

Just when you think that you have put the past behind you, something happens and all the old memories and feelings come piling on you again. Have you felt this way before?

The meaning of 1 John 4:18 “...perfect love casts out fear” was revelation to me. It is not our faith but our belief and trust in His love that will cast out our fear, fear of lack, fear of inadequacy, fear of failure, fear of tomorrow... It is the confidence in God's perfect love for me that will keep me there. Perfect love is love despite of. He loves me unconditionally, He loves me first... And if I decide to choose to believe that He loves me despite of what has happened and will happen to me, I can have no fear. Focussing and concentrating on God’s perfect love for me will drive out all fear.

And the greatest way to demonstrate that I trust in His perfect love is to give Him my yesterday, and thank Him for every failure, every setback, every pain in the past. Knowing that God has allowed my yesterday to make me what I am today gives me the peace and assurance that I can face tomorrow. God is a God of progress. He’s never standing still. Even when it seems that absolutely nothing is happening in my live or worse, life is taking many steps back, God is working behind the scene to fit me into His scheme of things.

Inspiration & Paradox 107: Time for Recollection

“Don’t tell him (my-father-in-law) that I am not working”, “why did you tell others that you are not working”, “there’s no need to tell others”, “keep these things to yourself”… my mother-in-law’s words repeated in my mind for many days.

For a while I really didn’t get what she meant. It was minutes before I could sense my crumbling pride and work through my own thoughts…

I was a bundle of nerves after I left my full-time job, but I was also very much looking forward to a new leash of life as a stay-at-home-mum. Whoa, new schedule, new objectives, new plans, new tasks and new routines. Honestly, I don’t mind a teeny bit rolling up my sleeves to dish out hot meals for my family, in fact I have a fetish for it. I know very well the importance of coaching my children, enjoy the new routines of morning exercise, cooking and baking, gardening, and putting in more hours on my website, and taking up part-time teaching in the university. But at the same time, I still miss that sense of “thrive and strive” when working in an organisation, especially when the days are so filled with “to-do-lists” and become rudderless with no sense of direction or focus. I seem to be shortening my sleeping hours, hatching more plans than ever, and having more anxiety to do more every day.

I began to understand why I was fazed by my mother-in-law’s words as I recalled my own feelings in my first month of staying at home…

I didn’t like buying groceries on a weekday morning in the cold stores with slow streams of maids and old folks coming in to browse and shop. I am not trying to make a mockery of these people; but being part of that picture made me feel like I am leading a mundane little life. Neither did I like to see mothers all dressed and powered up for work in the morning saying goodbye to their children as I sent Jackie to her childcare centre in my tee and shorts. It was like as if the whole world was reeling under rapid progress, while I just stagnated away in reclusion. And as if these were not enough to bruise my ego, the credit card telemarketer who was soliciting for new members had to drop my call the moment I told him that I was not working. I thought he was mean. Paging through the daily newspapers was also a dread when the economic slump news became massive. Headlines that read “The most important thing to do now is to keep your job…”, “More retrenchment expected…” “Families making ends meet” made the future gloomier by the day and put into me thoughts that I must be a nitwit to quit in such a time as this. I managed to shake off those negative feelings every time it came without trying to figure the reason for them. Some friends said I must be out of my mind to quit my job, while others applauded my boldness to step out of the corporate world. Then I actually felt quite proud of myself – hey, I was not mainstream! I had what it took to go against popular decisions! I realised there was a host of other meanings in those words that I didn’t associate with. And now I recall what the office canteen boss exclaimed when the news of my resignation reached his ears, “What a waste, you studied so much and now you’re going to stay at home to be a yellow-faced old hag, I just don’t understand you people!” and how the department secretary carped at me, “I tell you, the worst job is to be a housewife!” Names like “yellow-faced-wife” and “housewife” sounded terrible to me, but I didn’t care a fig what was hurled at me. To a certain degree, I even thought these people had quite a fair sense of humour.

Were my emotions then suppressed? I’m really not sure. Perhaps what my mother-in-law said just tipped over some large heaps of words that were piled over me before and caused me to quicken to my own inner senses.

Here I am, born and bred in a culture where everybody tells everybody that a good education is a passport to securing a good job, getting a good pay, and ultimately leading a good life. Period. No matter how much welfare you are able to contribute to your family, if you are not pursuing a good full-time job in a well-known organisation, you are not doing anything very esteemed. So when I turned against this social norm, I was actually secretly bothered by how I perceived myself – a small and insignificant nobody.

To say the least, my own self-discovery startled me. I know very well, it’s not my mother-in-law’s fault, or anybody else’s. While everyone is entitled to their own opinion, I sure can choose my own beliefs and not let any negative thought bug me. This time, I blame it on my own egotism that has turned the wrong side out.

I need to go recollect myself.

Inspiration & Paradox 106: Wrong Context or Wrong Crowd?

Following is one of those emails that flies around the offices on Friday afternoons. It's a thought-provoking one. The story wraps up with the suggestion that we humans are incapable of appreciating beauty and talent in an unexpected context.

Think about it again, is it "wrong context", or simply a case of "wrong crowd"? What's your take?

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A Violinist in the Metro

A man sat at a metro station in Washington DC and started to play the violin; it was a cold January morning. He played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time, since it was rush hour, it was calculated that thousand of people went through the station, most of them on their way to work.

Three minutes went by and a middle aged man noticed there was musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried up to meet his schedule.

A minute later, the violinist received his first dollar tip: a woman threw the money in the till and without stopping continued to walk.

A few minutes later, someone leaned against the wall to listen to him, but the man looked at his watch and started to walk again. Clearly he was late for work.

The one who paid the most attention was a 3 year old boy. His mother tagged him along, hurried but the kid stopped to look at the violinist. Finally the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children. All the parents, without exception, forced them to move on.

In the 45 minutes the musician played, only 6 people stopped and stayed for a while. About 20 gave him money but continued to walk their normal pace. He collected $32. When he finished playing and silence took over, no one noticed it. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.

No one knew this but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the best musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written with a violin worth 3.5 million dollars.

Two days before his playing in the subway, Joshua Bell sold out at a theater in Boston and the seats average $100.

This is a real story. Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of an social experiment about perception, taste and priorities of people. The outlines were: in a commonplace environment at an inappropriate hour: Do we perceive beauty? Do we stop to appreciate it? Do we recognize the talent in an unexpected context?

Inspiration & Paradox 105: Perfectly Imperfect Love

This morning I had a chat with Jackie’s child-care teacher…

Children are eager to please the people they love, and they do this by performing - behaving well and doing things right. And honestly, we adults often take advantage of that, don’t we. We show our anger and even say unkind words to our children when they misconduct. And often, they attach our emotions and reactions to how much we love them. Well, this happened to Jackie. In her most grown-up voice, she jested in the middle of our regular bedtime story-telling session last night, “When I don’t share my toys with my friends, teacher won’t love me.” Subsequently, a string of questions led me to discover that her childcare teacher has been teaching the kids to “win her love with good behaviour”.

So there I was at the child-care centre, trying pretty hard to put it across to the teacher in a nice way so that she wouldn’t feel embarrassed or offended, and frankly, most importantly, it wouldn’t cause a backfire on Jackie. I shared with her my concern about what Jackie had been picking up in the child-care, and my earnest request that the kids learned the correct reasons for good behaviour. I told that I would like Jackie to understand that our love for her was not a result of how good her behaviour was, and that her disobedience would not make us love her lesser even though we could be upset and appear to be very angry with her.

Awfully tough, isn’t. As much as we know the right things to do with our kids and want them to grow up feeling confident and secure, sometimes, we adults cannot even really grasp the concept of unconditional love ourselves very well, let alone a three-year old. Without a loving relationship, children don’t seem to have any reason to want to learn to behave in an acceptable. And it’s so hard for them to understand why when they do the wrong things, the love adults flaunt about is not expressed in the way they can understand (hugs and kisses).

God, help us flawed parents (and teachers) have a significant positive impact on our children’s lives with our imperfect love for them!

Inspiration & Paradox 104: Stars Do Not Twinkle

As with most young children, my 3-year-old loves the song Twinkle Twinkle Little Stars.

But we know that stars do not twinkle. When we look at them through the telescopes, they appear as discrete, tiny points of light.

Stars only appear to twinkle. We are viewing them through the thick layers of the earth atmosphere. As we look at them, the light given off by them has to travel through the moving layers of the turbulent earth atmosphere to reach our eyes. When this happens, the light of the stars is bent or refracted in different directions, resulting in the twinkling effect that our eyes see.

Inspiration & Paradox 103: An Adult Trapped in a Child’s Body

Lately, I have been looking for my favourite cartoon again. Most of the people around me have not heard of it -- Mafalda, a character created by Argentine cartoonist Quino.

Why do I find this 5-year-old girl so remarkable? She makes me laugh.

Patriotic, deeply concerned about humanity, human rights, and world peace, Mafalda is super-quirky, always posing awkward questions to her parents and friends. I adore her pure innocence, child-like temperament, and marvel at her strong character and sharpness of a grown-up thinking all at the same time. “An adult trapped in a child’s body” is how I describe her. She doesn’t try to be funny or even thinks she is funny, she is just funny! While her thoughts do evoke some very serious thinking about the ills of society, how the messages are crafted and delivered and the humour that comes with them will make you rock. Also, her bunch of quirky little friends (businessman, rich mummy wannabe, dreamer, and rebel) is a big attraction to me as well!

If you like comics, I highly recommend Malfada to you. It's translated into only a few languages though, and English is not one of them.

Inspiration & Paradox 102: The Older We Get, The More Lost We Feel

This comic strip by Scotts Stantis was published in the papers in 1995. It says in the first picture "WHAT AM I GOING TO BE WHEN I GROW UP?", and in the second, "I'M GROWN UP AND I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I'M DOING." Then in my early twenties, I thought what was depicted was funny but very real, so I made a cutting to keep it. Today, after more than 10 years, I saw it again while doing some housekeeping. The same sentiments somehow came back...

Inspiration & Paradox 101: Children Without Limits Feel Limited

Time and again, I have been told that we need to know how to discipline our children, especially when they are young. One revelation that really stands out to me is, “Our children expect us to punish them when they misbehave, and when we fail to do that, they tend to feel insecure and afraid.”

How very true this is! Yes, all children do fear disciplining parents and want to run away from the punishments meted out. Yes, they hope and even beg that they be spared of their wrongdoing; however, when we let them go scot free every time they err, overtime, they form an impression of us – weak, irresponsible, and unsure parents. And when they live under a perceivably weak authority that fails to teach and show them the boundaries and limits in life, they grow up lacking a sense of being protected, a sense of security.

Interesting, isn’t it. Lesson gleaned: Rules keep us safe.

Inspiration & Paradox 100: Circumstances Make or Reveal Us?

Look at this pot of Prickly Pear Cactus. It’s desperately reaching out for the sunlight in my balcony and the shape of its pad has also evolved into some strange-looking thin and long strip. I’ve been thinking lately…if I had left the pot in a different corner, would it grow the same way like now?

Do circumstances make us what we are or reveal who we are?

Inspiration & Paradox 99: Every Ending is a Start

The standard answer to the people who have asked me why I left my job was I have chosen to spend more time to raise my kids by taking up a part-time role instead. It’s a brief response, but a truthful one. Recording in black and white my feelings about important journeys in my life always helps me in a way come to terms with things. I figure it’s a sense of closure, a sense of completeness; a sense of urgency to start a new journey. It’s a way of therapy, getting in touch with myself. And this is what I will do now, dropping that “period” as the chapter ends.

Part of the truth also has to be that I have come to a cross road after 8 years in the same place and function, where I feel I want to make a different choice in life. I guess at some point in time, you just want to make a turn and find a fresh start somewhere because riding on the same old road gets scarier and scarier. It just gets too comfortable each year. I need to feel that I am progressing, not in monetary rewards, but in my knowledge and experience as a human. Staying where I am does not make me contented anymore. I think I had made my contribution, and want to be able contribute elsewhere. Well, it’s not true that the job was not demanding anymore, it was still, but I just know the boundaries of the job too well, what I could do and influence and what I could not. I think it’s very correct when people say “once the real passion and vision for the job is gone, it’s time to leave”. It’s hard to admit it, but I think that has happened to me.

Now I need to figure how to work on my new beginnings and am very curious how my life would come together again after this.