Overcoming porn with love and family.

Last Sunday, there was an encouraging story of how Christopher (names have been changed for privacy) overcame porn with the help of his parents and church.

Like all innocent beginnings, the first draw for Christopher was curiosity. He was only nine at that time. He chanced upon an image of a naked woman. He was curious to find out more. This curiosity - required for learning but can also be a lure for addiction - led Christopher to a world of porn. 

At 11, he dived into its online world.At 18, he recounted: “I wanted something a bit more stimulating. Eventually, the images of nude women weren’t that interesting anymore because I’d seen a lot of them.”

His mother, Pamela, 48, was a housewife at that time and his father, John, 50, was an educator. Christopher has an older brother and a younger sister. They were regular churchgoers. 

Pamela and John helped their son to break the habit. It took years. In 2016, Christopher, his older brother and John attended a church programme for men seeking to be free from porn. Christopher was 15 then. 

Reporting the story was Venessa Lee, and she wrote: “The church programme involved watching a video series on the topic and what John describes as meetings similar to AA (Alcoholics Aynonymous), with small groups talking about dealing with porn.”

Through diligent efforts, opening up about sexual addiction, sharing about honouring the opposite sex, with additional parental monitoring and restrictions, Christopher said that he is now free from the porn habit. 

Lesson? I have one, about parenthood, but the topic on the struggles of sex is a ride along, and it is captured in these words by Christopher: -

“It was an adrenaline rush - I felt good after I watched it. I would go back to it if I felt bored and didn’t have anything exciting to do before dinner or bedtime.”

There is something about sex that turns us men on. Whether you are young and curious or old and seeking expression or outlet, sex is very much a biological as well as a psychological stronghold. 

We produce millions of sperms each day - 1500 each second. We also have a dangling appendage that is easily aroused from the constant bombardment of mental imageries in today’s sexualised world. 

And every such arousal, and ejaculation bring about what the French calls “little death” of pleasure. That pleasure transports is to a world of our hidden and unbridled fantasy. 

That pleasure also entrenches memories that we secretly, and at times, subconsciously, recall when we crave to escape from the boredom, pressure and/or stress of daily living and working. 

These so-called recalled-at-will “little deaths” memories entice us to act on them, and most times, we tell ourselves that it is just a harmless diversion.

But Christopher’s words here is a warning: “Sometimes, I would think, can I even stop or is this going to go on forever?”

Well, that forever part is another way of saying this: “At first, you drink the drink. Later, the drink drinks you.” 

Addiction is a slippery slope. It doesn’t become slippery at the top or first step. At the top, it appears harmless, thinking one’s surefooted. It is somewhere in the muddled middle that the gradient turns a sharp angle downslope, most times without warning, leaving one wrongfooted. 

And the rest is a struggle between will and lust, pressure and pleasure, control and escapism, and for married men, opportunity and adultery. 

And...this brings me to my lesson. As I had said earlier, it is about parenting. 

Christopher recalled: -“My mother sat me down and told me why watching porn was wrong. She showed me from a Christian perspective what sex was about.” Outwardly calm, (Christopher’s) mother was devastated inside. She had been involved in a church group that helped parents with faith-based sex education for their children.””

“Pamela says: “I was shocked and discouraged. I was teaching other parents, but my son was watching porn. I felt I was a failure.””

I can identify with the “I felt I was a failure” part. I am a father of three and I have to say that we parents want nothing more than to see them grow up upright, surefooted, and resilient. That is the gold standard for parenting.

But, we don’t get to choose things or lives that way. Our children come to us, as they are. In poker analogy, we don’t get to choose a birth of genetic royal flush. 

And our control over them whittles away by the days, months and years from the time they are born. They not only grow up fast, they also grow up differently. Each of them takes different pathways of maturity. Their growth trajectory does not follow a predetermined parental plan. 

Gradually, their world branches out. From the crib to the living room area, from the home to playgrounds, schools and hostels, their circle of influence via socialization expands. 

Most of the time, the inflection of behavioural changes come from such socialization, beyond the comforts and security of the home environment.

Pamela and John appear to have everything a parent desires, that is, being a housewife means more time with one’s children, being a regular churchgoer means being blessed with a like-minded community of support and encouragement, and what’s more, John is an educator. 

I supposed they are economically stable too. Yet, as parents, our kids can experience life on the rough and tough side and that changes things and perspective for them. It may happen even without us knowing, or with us still assuming that things are ok.

Our kids come to us as gifts no doubt. But gifts can be broken even in our loving hands because we ourselves are learning. In other words, we have our own struggles. We also stumble and fall along the way. 

My takeaway from this post is in the words of Pamela: “We need to extend a lot of grace to our children and ourselves. Everyone makes mistakes. There is no need to condemn anyone. We pick ourselves up and learn and grow.”

That “grace to ourselves” part is what resonates with me most, and I feel it does not get mentioned enough. 

Perfect parenting is a myth. Human parenting with all its flaws is more reflective of reality. There is no full-dress rehearsal for us becoming parents. We keep forgetting that we have one lifetime to get it right, not overnight, or in one or two parenting seminars. 

And many times, along the journey, we get it wrong. But that’s what it’s all about right? The wrongs are what’s right about parenting when we - as Pamela said - “pick ourselves up and learn and grow”.

As such, we are never a failure for them if we never give up on them. That is grace, and grace-empowered parenting is about a heart of unfailing love, not a heart that gives up when it encounters failure. So, when we fall as parents, we pick ourselves up and continue to run the race until we complete it. 

Let me end by this words, “Captured Forever”. I love the image. As parents, our child are safe in our arms. They have captured our hearts and we can’t let them go without letting our hearts go. Our lives are thus intertwined. 

Captured forever means we will always be there for them as this life permits. We will celebrate their little milestones and cry with them as we walk with them through their own valley. 

That is a powerful image of enduring love, a love that not only abides over a lifetime, but one that overcomes together.

What sparks joy in your life?

It takes so little to be joyful, why then does it take so much to experience it? Why is it a struggle?

Let me share with you what senior consultant Dr Mok Yee Ming (of IMH) has to say about joy in his article, “What sparks joy in your life?”

He first defines it. “The Merriam-Webster dictionary describes it as the emotion evoked by well-being, success, or good fortune or by the prospect of possessing what one desires. It is also defined as a state of happiness.”

Mm...prospect of possessing what one desires. That seems to be the key. Seems simple enuff. In a nutshell, well-being or joy comes from getting what you want. 

But what if you do not get what you want? What if getting what you want eludes you throughout your life, and what you get is what you have, no more and no less? 

If possessing what you desire is joy, what if you possess what you think you do not desire, thereby falling short of what you want, is that the opposite of joy, erm, like resentment? Envy? Disillusionment? Disappointment? 

Where is the spark of joy in that life? 

Well, Yee Ming said that he is inspired by the writings of Viktor Frankl, the Austrian psychiatrist who was interned in the Nazi concentration camps during WWII. 

Viktor lost his mother, brother and wife in the camps. He had nothing that he wanted or desired while trying his best to survive in a place that was hellbent to break him to pieces and drain his soul of the desire to live on.

Yet, Dr Frankl wrote the momumental book “Man’s Search For Meaning” and his conclusion is this: “people are primarily driven by a “striving to find meaning in one’s life.””

Yee Ming wrote: “He felt that even in the most absurd, painful and dehumanised situations, life has potential meaning. I cannot even imagine the pain he must have felt upon losing his loved ones and the suffering he had undergone. But in the midst of all this, he was still able to find meaning in life. Life was still precious to him.”

Lesson? Just one. 

Yee Ming wrote about the alt-national anthem we Singaporeans often sing to after graduation, that is, the 5Cs - cash, credit cards, condo, car and country club membership. 

We know them by heart. We drill them into our soul from the get-go when we are released into the workplace. Those 5Cs are the trappings or symbols of success in our 1st World Economy. No one who is successful in the world’s eyes can do without them. 

But Yee Ming noted that we are no more happy with the 5Cs than we are without them, or without some of them. He wrote: “Regardless of how rich or poor you are, you stand an equal chance of developing depression.”

Maybe, the secret of a joyful person is not so much about possessing what you desire, but to be desired for who you are, that is, to be loved unconditionally, and in return, to desire that which is an end in itself. By this, I mean the pursuit not of things but virtues, not fame but personal growth, and not riches but relationship. 

On this, Yee Ming has this timeless advice: -

“It is about looking after yourself, taking time to make sure you have sufficient rest and exercise and taking time to challenge yourself in learning new skills and hobbies.

It is about relationships, being with family and making and maintaining a good circle of friends. It is about looking beyond your own needs, counting your blessings and helping others, especially those who are in need.”

None of the 5Cs featured prominently in that advice. Now, no doubt, we wish our children well as they go out to the labour force to make a living for themselves. 

We wish that they will excel in the things they do, earn a good income and be recognised for what they do. Along the way, we want them to flourish, and that also means prospering at their own time. 

Yet, as parents, this is what ultimately counts...when your child is tired, when the tides of the world toss and turn relentlessly, and they will, and when storms come to disrupt their little soul, you want them to return to where it counts the most, that is, a place of contentment, rest and peace, a place of unconditional love. That is home. 

A home is where his or her little heart will always find the anchorage and refuge they need to re-calibrate, restore and recharge, even re-purpose. 

We as parents must remind them that they are given only one life to make it count. In this life, there will inevitably be mistakes, detours and falls. What would a life of growth and resilience be without them right? 

But, as they learn to pick themselves up, change their thinking, perspective and ways, we wish for them to pursue things that count, things that last lifetimes, and they are the things Yee Ming talks about, that is, taking good care of oneself, having a good rest, learning new skills, loving family, good circle of friends, counting one’s blessings and helping others. 

In the end, it is about doing one’s best and never forget what matters in life. For in the rough seas out there, always look for the lighthouse, where the safe harbour is for one’s soul, which is never far. 

Let me leave you with this verse written four thousand years ago.

“Fill your bowl to the brim

And it will spill.

Keep sharpening your knife

And it will blunt.

Chase after money and security

And your heart will never unclench.

Care about people’s approval

And you will be their prisoner.

Do you work, then step back

The only path to serenity.”

(Tao Te Ching).

The Perfect One - Your soulmate.

Can you ever find the perfect one? Your soulmate? 

Lauren Chval, a freelance writer, found her “Mr Right” at 25, and it was only her second boyfriend after she mustered the courage to break off with the first. 

It was a tumultuous and volatile relationship, her first boyfriend. Lauren said that “after years of break-ups and make-ups”, they finally went their separate ways. 

But the second one, her husband, is different from the first. While the first was “controlling but thoughtful, intense in good ways and bad”, her husband was “smart, gentle and kind.”

She knows he is different because she felt he was too good for her. She said she “felt inept and unworthy in the face of his goodness”. 

Some of his qualities are: 

1) “He never called me names or exploited my insecurities in a fight”.

2) “He tended to his family relationships with purpose and unselfishness”.

3) “He has a calmness I cannot fathom”.

4) “He is rarely defensive when I raised problems with the relationship;”

and

5) “With an open mind, he has grown into not just what I needed, but what I wanted.”

She said that “he withheld deeper emotions until later in the game. He was everything (she) needed but nothing like (she) thought (she) wanted.”

“I married the steadiest person I have ever met and embraced our relationship for everything it was instead of everything it was not,” Lauren added.

Lesson? One. Soulmate? Well, is there really someone out there with your name on her or him? 

I like what Lauren said about relationships. “It is tempting to distil relationships into binaries. One person is passionate and thoughtful but bad; another is good and kind but boring. I fear a life of soulless domesticity but have found my marriage, and husband, to be far more complex.”

The truth is, you won’t know how your partner would turn out along the long course of a marital journey. There is no hard and fast rule to hooking up and staying together, forever. 

Opposite does not always attract and like does not always repel. We are not magnets, bound by some magnetic field. We are humans beings, having a say in the circumstances we are in. 

Two persons can hold different values and yet stay together for different reasons, reasons only the heart knows. 

Charles Darwin once wrote this to his wife of 43 years: “I wish you knew how I value you; and what an inexpressible blessing it is to have one whom one can always trust, one always the same, always ready to give comfort, sympathy and the best advice. God bless you, my dear, you are too good for me.”

You must know that Emma and Charles hold different beliefs. She took her nine children to church every Sunday and Charles would go for a quiet stroll around the church instead. He may have aspired to be an Anglican priest but he died an agnostic. He said “I never gave up Christianity until I was forty years of age." 

Emma however was a devout Christian to the very end. Yet, as a Christian, she helped Charles to edit his books, especially the most controversial of all, the Origin of Species. She changed his awkward sentences and walked him through some passages to firm them up.

She said: “Everything that concerns you concerns me and I should be most unhappy if I thought we did not belong to each other forever."

Their love survived the death of their children, sickness and pain, and polar opposite religious beliefs. In ordinary circumstances, they would have gone their separate ways long time ago. 

How about “Like” or like and like? Do they repel? Not so, because I know of a couple who runs the Last Resort, Ken and Addy. 

Their love for each other is based on what they have in common. They share the same interest, a mutual goal to be the light and salt to their immediate community, by providing a home for the lost, broken and rejected. You can read about them in the papers. 

My point is that, you can find many similar interests with your proposed life partner, but that does not guarantee a lifetime of bliss. 

Personalities still clash even when they are swimming in the same current or direction. Two peas in the same pod can be two peas that can’t stand each other and find living together suffocating.

Lauren is right, “it is far more complex” and not reducible to binaries. And honestly, I may have written some posts about love, yet I have never really thought about giving any advice to my daughters (9 and 14) about finding their Mr Right. 

I found mine (Miss Right) quite fortuitously when she caught my attention with her long flowing tresses. I knew her mane way before I knew her name (I know, sounds dubious). And the rest is, well, quite a blur as the world around me microscopically dwindled while hers inexplicably magnified. 

Admittedly, ours is not a smooth relationship. But it was nevertheless one that smoothened itself over time because we strive to turn every friction we encounter into a spark of discovery, and deeper understanding. No easy feat, but who says living together is easy? 

So, taking my cue from Lauren, I would tell my daughters this: -

“Dear, marry the steadiest person you ever meet and embrace the relationship for everything it is instead of everything it is not. 

Yes darling, the key is that you start with something good, something that sets the first spark between you and him. 

From there, focus on the spark, fan it, protect and nurture it. Forget about the bonfires elsewhere. Never keep your eyes away from your first passion. Never compare. 

Your love is yours to grow, treasure him. Encourage each other. Support each other. 

Love may be a gift, but in our hands, it becomes a training ground. Never give up learning, discovering, perfecting, even in the toughest of times. Never expect not to be disappointed. Expect instead to be always hopeful. 

And indeed, embrace the relationship for what it is and not what it is not. Because what it is not is nothing, empty. But what it is is a seed in both your hands. It can grow, it can blossom with time. It can bear good fruits, for a love that can last a lifetime.”

Age is a number: Reinventing yourself.

We all age. The moment we are born, we age. The chronological clock starts counting down. We draw closer to death. But as William Wan put it, “Ageism is far from dead.” Maybe I should call it “counting up”?

In the article today entitled “Reinventing oneself for the workforce”, William detailed a life after 50 that is quite illuminating and inspiring. Here is a walkthrough as he had journeyed it. 

After a turbulent time overseas, a bitter split with his business partners (that story is in his previous article which you can google), he returned totally crestfallen, despondent. But the spirit in him refused to take no for an answer. 

At 51, he returned to the legal profession “after having left it for nearly 25 years”. 

He wrote this: “I was considered too senior to be paid a junior’s salary and too out of touch in a rapidly digital, paperless world of law practice to be deserving of a senior’s pay.” 

So, in his fifties, he decided to strike out on his own. He said, “I would eat what I hunt.” Proving that age was not a barrier, he “was made a senior partner” within 8 months.

At 60, this dare devil of a young-at-heart man decided for the second time to quit the legal profession. He reinvented himself as a psychometric analyst “by learning this complex and techno-driven system to become the managing director of a psychometric company.”

Then, at 64, he was asked to helm the Kindness Movement. 

He wrote: “I quickly adapted to the art of leading a not-for-profit organisation where the KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) are totally different from what I was used to. I wasted no time in learning to be social media savvy in the digitally driven world of online marketing and video casting.“

Lesson? One. What is age except that it is only a number. Cliché? Another platitude? Circular bromide? Heard it, tired of it?

Well, the mind can make heaven out of hell and hell out of heaven. It can also make age about purposeful youthfulness and purposeful youthfulness about a tired, jaded old man in a young man’s body. 

I am sure you have read about a Dutchman Emile Ratelband, 69, who applied (in 2018) to the court of Arnhem in the Netherlands to have his age changed to 49, by legally rectifying his birth from 11 March 1949 to 11 March 1969. 

He said that “he did not feel comfortable with his official chronological age, which did not reflect his emotional state - and was preventing him from finding work, or love online.” (”Extra time” by Camilla Cavendish). 

Of course, the court rejected his application. But the point is not about chronology, but life-purpose, or as the Japanese would call it “ikigai” - “reason for being”. 

Ikigai is an intersection of four things: -

First intersection is between that which the world needs and that which you can be paid for and it is called Vocation. 

Second intersection is between that which you are paid for and that which you are good at and it is called Profession. 

Third is between that which you are good at and that which you love and it is called Passion.

And fourth is between that which you love and that which the world needs and it is called Mission. 

I believe the above intersections do not favour one for the other, and they exist not in any particular order. Your job can be your vocation (what you are paid for to feed the family and save for retirement), your profession (what you are good at) and your passion (what you love to do). 

Or, you can have your vocation/profession and at the same time, serving in a church ministry or a charity organisation you are passionate about or running a part time business you love and are equally good at. 

The bottom line is that iki (life) and gai (purpose) or ikigai (“reasons for being”) is what you do not just for extrinsic motivation - more money, more possession - but more significantly, intrinsic motivation, that is, pursuing a purpose that passes down a rich, resilient and inspiring legacy to your children and your children’s children. 

And when it comes to passion, honing your skills, and living with a mindset that makes the most of what you are prepared and willing to do, the only limit is what you have set for yourself in your mind and heart. 

Camilla of the book “Extra Time” wrote: “Tina Turner made the cover of Vogue at 73; Yuichiro Maura climbed Everest aged 80; Warren Buffett is still investing in his eighties and David Attenborough is making hit TV series in his nineties”. 

If so at their age, what then is your excuse at your age when you are still physically healthy? 

If you think, well, these people are giants in their own field, they are rich and powerful, and already established, mm...nobody is asking you to be like them, at where they are. Don’t be delusional and deepen the delusion by conveniently resigning to your fate. Never forget that the most enduring privilege in life is about being you, changing you, not being someone else, and dreaming endlessly about it. 

Obviously, we all have our own platform or launchpad of potential and excellence (at whatever age), impacting lives in our own way, even if it is within our own family, or friends/work colleagues. 

We may just be a little pebble taking that plunge or leap of faith into society’s placid waters. But it is not the size of the pebble so much as it is the ripple we make. 

You see, we can sit idly by the shore and lament until the sun sets on our chronological age, counting down to our death. 

Or, we can “count up” by taking that leap regardless of our chronological age, and create the ripple of effect. And then, take another leap and create another ripple of effect. 

However small the pebble, it can create limitless ripples. And that is what counts - for not all things that are countable counts. But, some things like “ikigai” clearly is not countable, yet it counts most in our life, that is, a life of youthful purpose at whatever the age. 

For sooner or later, it is never the size/status of the object/person taking the plunge, it is the size of the difference that plunge or leap makes, even if it is to a handful of souls within his/her modest circle of influence. 

Let me just say that I believe the same way we make excuses for ourselves, we can turn that around and create opportunity for ourselves. 

These opportunities do not have to cause a big splash because that never lasts for long. These opportunities can be purposefully modest, touching one or two lives, but what makes the difference is how such purpose-driven life never gives up, and through perseverance, it makes a bountiful difference to the lives of many. 

Let me end here, most appropriately, with a crucial nudge from a man who knows what he’s talking about. Here are some helpful tips for living a youthfully purpose- driven life from the indefatigable Mr Wan.

”So how do I reinvent myself? And what do I do right? 

First, I reframe my thinking by recognising what has changed, accept the new reality and adapt to it.

It also means that I cannot insist on the old adage that I know more just because I have lived longer. I am hardly as tech-savvy as the young digital natives.

Second, I am positive and embrace the challenges of having to learn new skills.

Though my memory is not as good as when I was younger, I resist the idea that old dogs cannot learn new tricks.

It means I have to work harder and longer to get there, and I am willing.

Third, I am resilient. I mentally prepare myself to be rejected because of my age and I refuse to be devastated.

I am courageous and persistent and do not allow ageism to determine my self-worth.

And fourthly, I submit to the authority of those who are the contemporaries of my own children.

Organisational authority is not a function of age. It is a function of appointment by the powers that be and since I choose to work in that organisation, I willingly abide by its polity.”

Ps: indeed you stand tallest when you are on your knees, not begging or resigning to fate, but learning, humbling and reinventing to sharpen your heritage. 

Remember: You are never too old. It’s not about age. It’s just that you’re never giving up. And a person like that never makes age an impediment, or excuse, but an empowerment. Cheerz.