Love is the measure of all successes.

"I got my O-level results 10 years ago. Look at me now."

This was the title of the article by journalist Jose Hong. He is 26 now. He's looking back 10 years to his O level days.

No doubt, still a young, vibrant life at 26, yet what he wrote, the candor and thoughts that went into it, makes good sense for me this morning. 

Then, at 16, Jose recalled that he wanted to be a movie director. His parents however wanted him to be a lawyer.

Now, 10 years later, he is a journalist, writing about people's lives (including his own), and learning to speak Swiss as part of his degree course.

What Jose is trying to say is that the 16-yr-old him then is very different from the 26-yr-old him now. And I bet that the 26-yr-old him now will invariably be very different from the 46-yr-old or 66-yr-old him in the future. 

As such, with hindsight, what seems like a big failure in our past is often interpreted as just a derailment in our present, and possibly adapted by us as a stepping stone to our eventual maturity in our future.

The truth is that, we all face major crossroads in the different phrases of our life. And PSLE and O levels can be overwhelming when it happens to you there and then at 12 or 16. The stress and burden can come down on us like a ton of bricks.

In fact, it shouldn't come as a surprise to us here that OECD has found that "86 per cent of Singaporean students to be worried about poor grades in school, compared to global average of 66 per cent".

As such, for some of our kids under such intense pressure, it may seem like the end of a 16-yr-old road in a life that has an average of 70-yrs-or-more mileage to go. 

It is thus not unexpected, but nevertheless undeniably tragic, that a young life with so much to offer may be prematurely terminated by suicide not so much because one did not make the grade at first try, but because one judges himself too harshly as a total disappointment in the eyes of his friends, teachers, and most of all, parents.

So, these school leaving examination results can be nerve-wrecking for a child, or a teenager, when the pressures come from everywhere...yes, from peers, teachers, school, and worse of all, parents.

All this is made worse in Singapore whose meritocratic culture is another word for the only legitimate process to determine success whereby students at that tender age are sorted, selected and groomed based solely on his/her academic distinction.

Like it or not, in our meritocratic democracy, a child is differentiated not by race, language or religion, but by grades. Alas, we may have accepted multiculturalism to a large extent, yet we are still struggling to accept academic diversity (that is, the fact that every child blooms at their own pace and time).

This is sadly our unspoken culture, and trust me, a society that is premised on unchecked meritocracy will end up in an ever-widening class divide made worse by unmitigated elitism.

Lesson? One, and it is for the parents - because the child often does it for the parents. It is our approval that they strive to secure, and never cease to do so since day one.

Here, Jose's words come in strong: "If I have a message for those who just got their O-level results, it is this:

This is only the beginning of a very long journey, a journey that will twist and turn in ways that you will never be able to imagine.

All those adults who seem to know what they are doing with their lives? Their paths lying clearly ahead of them? Nothing but an illusion."

The truth is, we parents do not always know what we want for ourselves, what's more for our kids. We too are lost ourselves.

All we have is a rough idea of what we want for our kids, that is, the template answer of success that follows a worldly script. 

We want them to score well so that they can get a good, stable job and earn enough, if not above and beyond what one can earn, to support themselves and their family with a little on the side for retirement, investment and inheritance.

But a path leading to all that for our child takes on many twists and turns (that one will never be able to imagine) to arrive at.

And even if one eventually arrived at all that, namely, a good and stable job with good earning potential, what's next then?

Surely, that's not the end of it right? 

You see, our child may have secured all that in his or her early thirties, and then, what's next? 

Go for broke? Lead a breakthrough technology that sets about a revolution like Amazon or Alibaba? Become the captain of industry, lead a corporate empire, steer a conglomerate?

Well, the reality is that, for every corporate success we read in the papers, there are thousands of failures we don't read about.

People try and fail all the time. In fact, those we succeed are themselves failures many times over before they finally make it.

And then, they are many who never made it. They just didn't have the grit and determination or luck to make the cut, catch the first wave, or hold onto the coattail of a shooting star when it comes by.

Alas, we gravitate towards success stories and glorify them ceaselessly, but forget that there are other stories in society that are equally inspiring but they just don't have that kind of glam and glitz the stories of worldly successes carry.

There are unquestionably unsung heroes in the nooks and crannies of our society that most of us do not even bother to take a second look just because they are not rich or famous enough.

Mind you, living a life pursuing grade, money and fame as the only barometer of success is like driving a sports car at breakneck speed with the wind in your hair, booze in one hand and hot models behind, but no brakes to stop you from going off the cliff.

In the end, for me, what matters most is how much we (as parents) love our child, and not how much we can reap from such love. Love is an end in itself, and not a means to some ends. Love is its own rewards.

As such, there's a reason why love is unconditional, but not blind.

It expects but never condemns. It gives but never spoils. It forgives but never overlooks. It hopes but never passively. It is patient, but is never taken advantage of. It sacrifices but also count the costs. It overcomes for it is never overwhelmed. And for those reasons, this love never fails. 

Love should therefore be the first and foremost barometer of success; not grades, money or fame. And while grade, money and fame will rise and fall, come and go with the time, love is for a lifetime and lasts a lifetime.

After all's said and done, our love is our child's enduring hope. It is his assurance and his identity. It is from such parental devotion that they draw their strength to overcome their own trials; even after they leave school and start their own family.

And even if they were to never find the success that the world so desperately craves after, I trust our child will never lose his/her anchorage, resilience and identity when the same are forged by such unfailing love in his youth.

And because this love is unfailing, no success in this world can compare with it anyway, whether in depth of meaning, breadth of sacrifice or scope of satisfaction. Cheerz.