Monogamy is a demanding discipline.

It was a marriage of 30 years. They have two grown up sons. She is 56 and he is 54. They were both working in the civil service. 

She was 18 when she joined and she was working as a technician. It was reported that “throughout the years, her career had remained stagnant so that her husband’s could thrive, noted the judge. Her promotions were delayed because she had to care for the family.”

In 2017, she filed for divorce. It was on his unreasonable behaviour. “Such behaviour included the husband requesting the wife to accept his mistress into the family and into the matrimonial home which the wife agreed to,” noted the Judge. 

Yes, you read it right. It is not that uncommon. Some spouses bring their mistresses back home. Some are done in secret; others in the open. Still others ask for some permanent arrangement of blissful co-existence. While marriage covenants are exclusive, adultery (in some cases) is inclusive yet often unilateral in favour of the dominant spouse, that is, the husband usually gets the final say in such arrangement. 

Mind you, I have done divorces where, in a small 3-room HDB flat, the husband and his mistress(es) conducted their trysts in the master bedroom while his wedded wife and kids are squeezed into the other available room. I could still remember what the wife told me, quite nonchalantly: “they are very inconsiderate...sometimes at night they are noisy and my kids just can’t sleep.”

Alas, in most cases, the matrimonial bed is the bellwether of the health or the future of the marriage. It is supposed to be exclusive, and that is what the marriage vows have delineated for the couple before a crowd of witnesses. It seemed believable enough then.

But, in practice, especially when one party ages over time and the other party starts to wonder whether he has gotten the short end of the marital stick in a world so full of enticing options and endless opportunities for self-gratification, a sheen of cold wax soon starts to form around the edges of one’s restless heart. A marriage whose heart is unguarded often takes off at the slightest agitation of lust and self-devotion. 

The husband in that case was said to be confounded with the wife’s application for divorce. “The husband claimed in these proceedings that the wife was happy with this arrangement and was surprised she had cited this as a reason for the divorce,” observed the judge. 

In a bid to have his bed and sleep on it, the husband sought his wife’s consent in 2014. Well, she reluctantly agreed. 

But honestly, I too am confounded. I wonder, why do you bother pursuing an agreement when it is wholly one-sided? If there ought to be mutuality in agreements, would the husband readily accept it if the table is reversed? Indeed, some agreements are so devoid of self-awareness that it makes a mockery of a gentleman’s handshake. 

In any event, I am sure it is a conscience pact, one in which the husband gets to do what he wanted without keeping it under wraps. Somehow, the pleasure derived from lust under the covers is nowhere near the pleasure arrived at when such liaison is held in the open with a conscience naively mollified. 

The forbidden fruit may yield a juicy bite when taken in sheer darkness, but over time, it is the borrowed light of self-righteousness that holds a greater draw. And like the lust of a man’s heart, legitimacy in whatever form that one can secure compels him to a pact of betrayal under the guise of forced approval. 

At times, it goes beyond self-righteousness to a marital schemer manipulating the terms he wants, almost akin to an agreement that is secured under duress. 

Let me end with this inconvenient truth. In a sexually exclusive union, I have no delusions about the ideal as spelt out in the marriage vows. We are human after all, enfleshed in our own wayward desires. For whose mind in the course of marriage doesn’t wander to uncharted territory where the juiciest fruit are laid bare for the plucking? 

Monogamy is a demanding discipline, of the mind, of the soul and of the heart. When two souls intertwine, when they make a promise to each other before loved ones, the integrity of the union comes not from some ideal floating in the air. No, it instead comes from a lifelong discipline to subject one’s freedom to choose to advance only one’s pleasure for the freedom to choose to fortify what is the pleasure of a lifetime covenant.

That pleasure is beyond the lusts of one’s desires. It is beyond a momentary fling. It is a pleasure that does not outgrow the promise of the union. It in fact nurtures it. It grows stronger with age because it draws its resilience from time. And it comes with a price. It’s the price of enduring love. 

Not all can afford to pay it though. Or want to.

 

Kintsugi of life.

I have always been fascinated by the Japanese art of restoring brokenness. It is called Kintsugi. 

The metaphor it carries (for life) is deep and rich, also reassuring. It concerns a vase, an antique or a vessel not being discarded for being broken, but restored. Not being condemned, but rehabilitated. This bodes well for a life, one as broken as yours and mine. 

Kintsugi is also about the golden joinery where cracks are joined together by lacquer mixed with gold or silver. The end product is a broken vase made whole again with its brokenness revealed, not hidden or covered. 

That's about sums up a life in this hardscrabble path of pain, sorrow, and disappointment, where triumphs and hopes are found both in the valleys and the mountaintops. 

Years ago, I read an article by author and philosopher Gary Hayden who wrote about Kintsugi. He quoted Ernest Hemingway who said "The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken pieces."

 

Life indeed challenges us all. Even the rich and powerful confront life on equal footing. Their wealth and power form shadows that haunt them at night. No one born to this groaning earth lives in a bubbled world, because the heart is rebellious and faces the prospect of brokenness. 

I recall a preacher once put a question to a class of children: ”If all the good people in the world were red and all the bad people were green, what color would you be?” One little girl thought about it and her innocent face glowed. She replied: “Reverend, I’d be streaky.” 

Mm...come to think about it, Kintsugi is about that kind of streaky. Those strips of colours covering the cracks have no particular order or pattern. It is not preset. None of our streakiness is the same. The pattern is unique to each person. Our brokenness may originate from the same source, that is, our journey in life, but it breaks us at different times and places, different seasons and spaces. 

One theologian puts it aptly: “Somewhere in each of us we’re mixture of light and darkness, of love and of hate, of trust and of fear.” 

Indeed, life makes victims of us all. Even for the rich and powerful, death, sicknesses and pain do not pass them by. 

The birth of a life is the start of this peculiar agony. We dive into living in our youth - careless and free. We dream big and hold on to the constellation of hope. We trust easily and give wholeheartedly. We suspect little and let go without doubts. 

As we grow older, with marriage and kids, with increasing responsibility on our overburdened shoulders, we start to crack at the seams. Our soul becomes weary by the heights that pride brings us with the painful plunge that awaits. Sorrow and disappointments come by like our next door neighbors and betrayal of the heart strikes like predictable storms. 

No one escapes a broken heart. Sooner or later, the delirium of youth gives way to the disillusionment of age. Epictetus once wrote: "Don't demand or expect that events happen as you would wish them to. Accept events as they actually happened. That way, peace is possible."

That's the illusion of control. It is the antithesis of contentment and peace. 

Life will not bend to our rules. We can strive for financial security but not necessarily emotional satisfaction. We can work up a healthy diet and exercise regime but are unable to stop the fatal mutation of a cell. And we can achieve academic titles but not character growth and maturity. A classroom does not prepare us for a world that stokes our innermost appetites and set fire to our hidden lusts. 

Life plays no favourites too. Even at times, what you sow is not what you wish you reap. This is another control fallacy - to think you can micromanage choices so that the consequences are ringfenced and well tamed.

Well, reality check, life is not a well-managed zoo where our animalistic emotions are neatly caged for merely display purposes. They break out sometimes and run wild when circumstances (as we age) grow beyond our expectation and control. The fear of death makes anxious freaks out of all of us. 

And at some point, faith will test you. Hope will leave you. And love, especially love, will break you. They will conspire to stretch you to breaking point. Like a vase or a vessel, you will crack; some pieces will fall off. 

Alas, I return to kintsugi - the Japanese art of restoring broken antiques. The point of Kintsugi for me is that life is not one red-carpeted glam walk from start to end. Not even close. For we can very well determine the color of our sail, but never the tides, winds and waves while at sea.

Here, I recall this, blessed are the cracked, for they shall let in light. Indeed, an insulated life is an alienated life that never grows because it is never tested. It takes comfort in the dimness of its own limited experiences, or worse, deluded expectations. 

And if experiencing and embracing love is the summation of a good life, then love will not leave us the way we are, that is, dependent and deluded, immature and empty. 

Love will test and break us. Love will leave us open and vulnerable. Love takes us out of our comfort self to share and sacrifice with others. Love joins our heart with another and doubles the exposure. It also doubles the overcoming. 

Yet, the cracks grow us. Brokenness steels us. And the wounds empower us. Like the lacquer-streak of gold or silver in kintsugi, it reminds us how far we have come and how much we have grown. For we may come out streaky, but that is the messy colours of resilience. 

Mind you, resilience does not come from unbrokenness. It comes with each piece restored to become one whole. Brokenness as a community thus holds us together better than the arrogance of invulnerability, where we are set apart from the community. 

For that's the kintsugi of life, and the goal of living and overcoming, not with a heart unbroken, but one made whole, made stronger and made with depth of compassion, by brokenness.

 

Father kills daughter - Mental Illness is real.

“You are a selfless, loving and devoted father.” 

That’s the words of Justice Hoo when she sentenced Tan Tian Chye, 66, (“Mr Tan”) to two years and nine months in jail yesterday for killing his daughter. But taking into account that he had been in remand since 20 Nov 2018, Mr Tan was released yesterday, the same day he was being sentenced. 

This is one case where justice rightly took the road less travelled when the love of a father was pushed to the edge. It is also a case where the tragic crash of mental illness and a caregiver’s devotion ended up in a stranglehold that led to one’s daughter’s death. 

When Mr Tan strangled his daughter to death, he was diagnosed for “suffering from a major depressive episode and significant caregiver stress.” In fact, the judge noted that “Mr Tan and his wife had been on the verge of suicide as their daughter became increasingly unreasonable.”

It reports that Mr Tan and his wife did everything his daughter asked of them. They bit the bullet when she scolded them incessantly, found fault with them and even made them bow before her. Their daughter was mental ill, and was diagnosed with panic attack, when she fainted in the MRT in 2012. 

She was also diagnosed with agoraphobia (“a condition which made her anxious in unfamiliar environment”) and “hypochondriacal preoccupation”.

Here’s a rundown of what the parents have to bear, everyone of them eventually led to the last straw on that fateful day.

After the daughter was diagnosed with panic attack in 2012, she became “anxious about leaving the flat on her own and her boyfriend moved into the flat with her. She also became more particular, and would ask her parents to clean items repeatedly until she was satisfied.”

In 2017, she forced her parents to borrow from their relative so that she could apply for a BTO flat and also ”made her younger brother return $50k her parents had spent on his education.”

When she discovered she was not the sole beneficiary of her mother’s CPF nomination, she “scolded her parents until her mother changed the nomination.”

In mid-2018, she demanded her parents buy industrial fans to blow away secondary smoke coming into their flat. Subsequently, she moved out to her aunt’s place to escape the smoke. 

And according to the DPP, “(she) became more insistent and abusive, and blamed the accused and his wife for not loving her and not providing enough for her.”

Alas, the last straw came on 19 Nov 2018, “after (Mr Tan) picked her up from the aunt’s place, she told him over lunch that she felt like killing him with a fork.”

She then verbally cursed and abused her father throughout the journey. And “upon reaching home, she went to the kitchen, and (Mr Tan) picked up a metal pole to arm himself out of fear that she would harm him.”

“In the kitchen, when he saw her pointing a knife at him, he hit her with the pole and after she fell to the floor, he grabbed a cloth and strangled her with it.”

Mr Tan then called the police and told them that he had killed his daughter.

When Mr Tan heard the sentence yesterday, he thanked the judge, prosecutors and his lawyers and said: “May God bless all of you.”

Lesson? Just one. 

At the sentencing, the judge remarked that this is a sad case that could have been avoided if timely help and appropriate intervention were received by Mr Tan and his family. This is true, because at every critical intersection, the last straw is often the most unexpected one. 

As I am writing this, I have no doubt that many families can identify with Mr Tan in the same way that many could identify with the case of the father-in-law who had stabbed his son-in-law thrice on the chest for his impenitent/arrogant behaviour (which all added up and drove him off the edge) He too suffered from depression). 

Of course, the two cases can be distinguished, but my point is that the last straw is often the unseen, unplanned and unsuspecting intruder into one’s life, and it is described as a “featherweighted straw” because, most times, it doesn’t take a push of great emotional magnitude to cause one to snap, but a light nudge would suffice to change the course of one or two lives forever. 

This case is tragic because, as a father with two young daughters, I could feel his love and devotion for his daughter. Without a doubt, it was a love so compelling that one is prepared to dedicate his whole life or give his life to his daughter without any consideration. 

But to be cornered by circumstances that converged or conspired to overwhelm a father’s love until he had to act in that way speaks of a tragedy that is beyond words, beyond punishment, and beyond imagination. 

The judge said: “It is unfortunate because that much needed help, support and intervention were not sought by or given to the Tan family during those years for their daughter and, thereafter, for the accused.”

Well, let me end by saying that, as a conservative and tradition-bound nation, it is really the last resort for a father (or mother) to want to seek help due to the social stigma involved (amongst other considerations). 

And as a corollary of that is this grim reality that there is always a dark competition between what is the last resort and what is the last straw that breaks the soul and will of a “selfless, loving and devoted father”. 

Tbh, at times, who wins this dark competitive race is determined by who gets to the finishing line first, that is, it is a race between seeking help as the last resort and unwittingly allowing the last circumstantial straw to fall due to a father’s protective, if not, sometimes biased, love.

 

Family Law is a Misnomer.

It is true. Family law, as Justice Choo has said, is a misnomer. It is not a law to keep a family going. It is a law to save parties, including the kids, from a family breaking up.

Leo Tolstoy said: “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family are unhappy in its own way.” I guess this is where Family law comes in; to address and resolve the many ways unhappiness is expressed within a family - to put it mildly. 

Family law is one of society’s handmaidens to help parties resolve disputes, especially one that can be as bitter as divorces, family violence, the division of assets accumulated jointly, and the issues concerning the care of their young children. 

Justice Choo said: “By the time the (law) is involved to resolve domestic problems, it usually means that the family can no longer mediate within itself. It is one thing for a family to give and take within itself, and another for a third party to determine how they should do it.”

Unlike a commercial contract, a marital vow comes frontloaded with great expectations. No ordinary contract signed on the dotted line ends with the lifetime bond of nuptial union. Imagine business partners shaking hands, smiling at one another, saying, “Till death do us part”. Scary right?

Usually, when a commercial undertaking is realised and the net profit is divided amongst the parties based on the contractual terms, the partnership ends there. 

You take your money as a reward for the faith, trust and effort invested in a business venture for a period of time, and each of you walks away, satisfied. Most of such handshakes, should the purpose for which they join hands come to pass, conclude with a happy ending. Incidentally, friendships are then forged. 

Even for commercial disputes, when things go down south, the parties are often kept at arms’ length. While emotions may flare up and distrust deepens for the long run, once the matter is arbitrated and resolved, you can generally expect the business wounds to heal. 

For a marriage, however, things are never that simple or straightforward. The wounds for some are never healed. 

What complicates the issue even more, if not much more, is the consummation not just of hearts, bodies and souls, a spiritual union of sorts, but it is the unyielding fruit that such intimacy brings. Mind you, that is part of the covenantal expectation of a marital union. 

When something as miraculous as a life is being conceived in a womb by the joint and indispensable efforts of two ordinary and broken souls (who never stop wondering how undeserving they are), the vows they take to each other suddenly comes alive and the gravity of their passion unknowingly sets the law of love in their hearts. 

When I first held my firstborn in my arms, his vulnerability became my vulnerability, his hopes became my hopes, and his joy became my joy.

From there on, Anna and I know that no contractual terms or language can ring fence or define that kind of passion, commitment and nurture each of us is call to bring into the marriage, which has, by sheer deliberation, served one of its highest purposes, that is, the conception of a life, or in my case, three.

You can therefore see how when a marriage is taken seriously, it can lead to a perpetuated “lawless” (or law-superfluous) bliss that is governed by the self-sacrificial acts of love. 

Family law would then become redundant in a family that has no use for it when love as an ideal is diligently applied to raw reality and is then transformed into a love that is resilient and always overcoming. And when you have arrived at that level of marital commitment, you would then need family law as much as a fish would need a bicycle. 

But any commitment below that covenantal threshold is witlessly beholden to the laws of familial disunions. It is therefore bound by its human-directed solutions, one that can never reach a perfection that the perfection of love in a marriage can reach over a joint and shared lifetime. 

Let me end with our greatest aspiration as a human being with a sealed expiry date. Our greatest aspiration as a living soul is to be loved and accepted, and in return, to give love and accept another, both unconditionally. 

That kind of mutuality is beyond the ambit and reach of a commercial handshake. That kind of union is nurtured in the timeless womb of love that only produces eternal results when two lives come together to sacrifice for one another. 

Marriage is therefore not a self apart from another self. It is instead two selves losing themselves in a union that is transformed by selflessness. No other secular bonds come close to such nurtured resilience, growth and maturity over one’s lifetime. 

So, yes, family law will always be a misnomer because it is nevertheless society’s earnest handmaiden of resolving conflicts that arise from a bond that often operates not on the covenantal level, but one out of a passivity based largely on natural convenience.

William Wan: Life is good.

William Wan shared about his descendants in the papers today. It’s a big family. Three tiers in fact. 

He was recently in US to celebrate his granddaughter’s birthday and in Canada to attend his grandson’s graduation from university. 

If you are counting, he and his wife have three children and their children have children of their own. As they have been living apart for the last twenty years, William said that such reunions are rare and dearly treasured. 

In a nutshell, he wrote about what a father has learnt from his children. 

Firstly, he said that he is a fumbling imperfect father. Growing up, his children often came to him to tell him that he spent too much time in his work as a lawyer and a pastor. He said if he would do it all over again, he would spend more time with them. 

Secondly, he regretted that he “had uprooted them more than once in their growing-up years and was not sensitive enough to realise the negative effects on the kids’ sense of security, not having their dad to themselves.” 

This second lesson comes under the reflection “In my passion to serve others, I had spread myself too thin.”

Thirdly, by any standards, William’s children did well in life. 

His eldest (Li-Ann) and her husband left their well-paying jobs to join a non-profit organization to support mission groups. His second child (Li-Lynn) “earned her doctorate, joined the university and then left to be a full-time self-employer potter.” 

And his son, a psychiatrist, left a “well-known hospital to chart his own course in private practice.” 

William wrote that they all have his DNA to start their own businesses, be their own boss. 

Fourthly, his children learned from his life as a father, both the positive and negative aspects. 

On the positive side, they learnt to be others-centred, giving to others, like their dad. On the negative side, they learnt “not to be like him,” busily serving others and spending less time with the children.

And lastly, William said that his kids were “very magnanimous” to him. He wrote this: “it is very gratifying to be assured that they have forgiven me and love me all the same despite my many failures”. 

He recalled that at his 70th birthday celebration, Li-Lynn told her siblings this: -

“Throughout our childhood, our home was always full of people. At Christmas, my father would invite anyone he came across, who didn’t have a place to go...and take in and care for anyone who needed a place to stay - for a meal, for a week, sometimes months, sometimes even longer.”

Lesson? I think by any standards William had lived a relatively fruitful and enriching life for himself, for his marriage, and for his children. He wrote this conclusion: -

“I am truly grateful to be a father of these children. I have learnt much from them and am very proud to be their father. We do become better parents and better people if we are willing to learn from our children.”

In his life, I suppose you see the timeless principle of sowing and reap at work. 

Now, in his early seventies, William is physically active, writing books, giving back to his pastoral flock and community, having reared up three well-grounded, down-to-earth children with families of their own, generally doing well themselves, and doing what he loves, with a supportive and resilient marriage to boot. 

I guess, that’s what a good life looks like? 

This of course does not come without perseverance, hope, faith and love. But when the harvest comes in its own season, the generous reaping is as fulfilling and empowering as the faithful sowing. 

When you look back, sitting with your wife at the summit of your golden sunset, you finally get to see clearly how each and every step in the right direction (despite the relentless pull of gravity to take the convenient and easy pathway) makes sense as the full picture comes to glorious view.

Alas, not all of us will arrive at the same mountain peak as that of William’s. 

Our mountain may take longer to scale. Along the climb, we may have lost loved ones, mourning over their passing with incomprehensible grief as we take the load with us in our perseverance to scale our own mountain. 

Some of us start the climb alone. We come from broken families, never truly experiencing a father’s love and presence. Yet, we make it nevertheless with children of our own.

Others start the climb and give up mid-way. They then start all over, and over and over again because society seldom give them the break they desperately crave after. The grim reality is, they end their lives not at the peak, but at the valley. 

Alas, we all want to hear good stories, ending well, or victoriously, and long to follow the principles such stories aim to impart. 

William’s life and its sowing and reaping principle are good narration of how to live a fruitful life. And the harvest towards the end is the summation of one’s persevering efforts.

While reading them may inspire, yet it is the choices we make here and now that determine our life’s trajectory. And while we all look for that feel-good moment to take the first step or to continue forward, it is often how we overcome the feeling-bad moments that transform us the most, if not the deepest. 

Nothing grows at the summit. It is at the valley that the trees grow strong and tall. It is a story of overcoming, and everyone of us, if not most of us, has to start at the valley of brokenness - and for some, at the valley of second and third chances - to make that climb to the top. 

And while our summits may be different from William’s, yet at the tail-end of a journey of hope, faith and love, the resonating fulfilment from within is always the same, and deeply felt.

Avoiding the success trap.

We tell ourselves that relationship matters, but are we convinced that it really does matter?

If you browse through Sunday Times, Life Family section, you will not miss an article written by Abel Ang, “Avoiding the success trap for a fuller life”.

He fired off with this question: “If the home I live in (Housing Board flat), the car I drive (Toyota Altis) and where I go for holidays (staycations) do not affect the quality of my life, how do I measure my life?”

Or, how about this - if living in a large mansion, driving expensive sport cars and investing in real estate abroad and travelling there to live in it do not affect the quality of my life, how do I then measure my life? 

Many living the first question tend to want to know the answer to the second question, because there is a certain form of restlessness and quiet desperation in our hearts that demands we do not stop at the first question. 

But where do we then draw the line? Where is the point where we look back in our life and tell ourselves - “Hey, am I happy? Am I satisfied? Will this be enough?” 

Mind you, this applies to the one attempting to answer both questions regardless of whether they are living in modest or exquisite circumstances. For the poor or the struggling by may just be as restless as the rich and thriving along. 

Ultimately, the question is indeed this: “how do I measure my life?” 

Because if you think about it, you can measure it one way (building relationships) without compromising the other way (pursuing your dreams). 

In other words, you can be thriving, in your element, being rich and emulated by many, and still flourish in your relationships, that is, those important ones like marriage, parent-child and friendships. 

Yet, here is something to pause for thought in Abel’s article. He quoted Professor Clayton Christensen who authored the book “How Will You Measure Your Life?” and this was his general observation as expressed by Abel: -

“The thesis is that successful people invest in things with tangible and visible short-term returns versus investing in things that take longer to show results.”

A varied strain of instant gratification in us?

He continued: “Investing in a job and career yields quicker and more visible results - better pay and promotions - compared with investing in family and relationships, where it takes years to see any discernible improvement or achievement.”

Here is Professor Christensen’s conclusion in the book: -

“After 25 years of observing the MBA graduating classes at Harvard Business School...In the early years post-graduation, alumni returns with the usual markers of success - large houses, abundant bank accounts and trophy spouses. In the later years, he saw a litany or broken relationships - divorces and estranged families.”

So, Professor Christensen summaries his general observation this way: -

“People who are driven to excel have this unconscious propensity to under-invest in their families and over-invest in their careers - even though intimate and loving relationships with their families are the most powerful and enduring source of happiness.”

This led Abel to conclude that “perhaps living a simple life, free from the trapping of success, will allow us to spend more time investing and developing intimate and loving relationships, as well as to contemplate how to live better lives.”

Lesson? Mm...perhaps. 

Perhaps contentment is an unsurpassed treasure, and anyone who has found it at the expense of a thousand desires has truly found a pearl of great value?

Alas, with the benefit of hindsight, a life’s vision of a perfect 20/20, we would all be like Socrates living a life of a nomadic educator, stripped of the extravagance of his time, searching for the ultimate meaning of life, and leaving a trail of people transformed by his exceptional wisdom. 

But Socrates did not exactly live a life of unbroken relationships. His relationship with his wife was distant and cold and he was rumoured to have a girlfriend whom he was enamoured with. 

In other words, he was not known to be a good husband and this quote by him expresses it well: “By all means, marry. If you get a good wife, you will be happy. If you get a bad one, you will be a philosopher.”

Maybe in the marital department, Socrates had drawn the shorter end of the lottery stick?

My point is, we do not have perfect life’s vision, 20/20. At an age just after graduation, we are like a space shuttle packed to our ears with solid rocket launchers and propellants ready to start off in full blast. The sky (if not beyond) is indeed our limit. 

That celebrative and hungry start can land us anywhere. 

Some misfire and remain where they are. Some fire with gusto, floating for a season on air, but their fuel runs out and they return to earth, in perpetual discontent. Others make it through the earth’s stratosphere and got lost, just to discover that it is dead calm in outer space. 

Still others make it, did well in their life’s mission in the niche space they are pursuing, and returning home to loving, unbroken families. 

In the end, life and living do not exist in a social vacuum. Circumstances can change us. We can change us. Others can change us. 

The convergence of circumstances, we and others can all change us for better or for worse, or for a season, and then we return home like the prodigal son, reformed and changed. 

And others who may live a seemingly ordered, safe and compliant life, like the elder brother of the prodigal son, yet they never found peace in their hearts, never found anchored rest. 

If I had to give my son an advice after his graduation, it should be along these lines:-

“Yes son, be contented with what you have, but don’t be pretentious or cowardly to use it as an excuse for not pursuing your dreams. 

When you are young, do what you can with what you have without leaving your conscience behind. If anything, work on your conscience more than your pursuit so that you do not get lost and disillusioned in the wilderness of your own unmitigated appetites and desires. 

When you love, love wholeheartedly. Love unselfishly, even knowing that you may be deeply hurt. The reward of love is always growth, maturity and resilience. Sometimes, it is forgiveness and personal redemption. It is never a reward you extract just to benefit yourself. 

And if you let your conscience and love be your guide, you will always find many rest stops of self-reflection along your journey of realising your dreams. These rest stops are there as inflection points to nudge you to a place of resolute and authentic contentment, a place where the best version of yourself is put forward in every sincere endeavour you take.

And it is also a place where your relationships will always flourish because you do not lead a life of quiet (restless) desperation, but one of quiet resolution with a perspective to see beyond the earthly strife and endless pursuits. 

Once there, you will also realise the best measure of your life, and that is, a life not only of deep contentment and good conscience, but also one of enduring love.”