The Difficulty of Dreaming

I write speeches in MOE. I paint wonderful pictures of what life would be like if we get our education system right; if our teachers put their hearts and souls to nurturing their students, the only limit to their lives is how big their dreams are. I write that students, if things were done right to them, would be seized with the joy of life, and would live their dreams out passionately.

But it is a really difficult thing to dream once you’re out of school. In school, we dream many things of we want to be; and our teachers (the good ones, at least) religiously build up our self-confidence to (dare I say) “dare to dream”. It’s a good feeling; dreaming of which college you want to go to. And then when you’re in your “dream college”, dreaming of the possibilities before you – working in a big job, traveling the world, making a difference.

Something happens after graduation that seems to rob us of the power to dream. Some people call it maturity; others call it disillusionment. But it sets in for most people. I look back to my school and college days – the dreams I had; the dreams I knew people had. And I look at the present. Our dreams would be ashamed of us.

Why is it so hard to dream? I suppose there’s just so much to lose; to be different. There’s a certain expectation of how life should turn out; and we live such timid lives within those well-defined parameters. True, we still dream sometimes – earthly, material, short-sighted ones. “Oh! Life would be so perfect if I get my hands on the iPod nano!”, or “Oh! It would be so perfect if we could spend December in Bali”. We’re such fools to believe we would be complete if only we had those petty dreams.

What happened to the big dreams? The dreams of making a difference, or being who we are, and proud of it?

It hits us all eventually. Some when they wallow in mid (or quarter)-life crises. Others when they have lost everything they thought mattered, or when the veil of superficiality is lifted for them to see their petty dreams in all their vain glory. We come face to face again with the student we had left behind when we graduated – the beaming, happy, expectant face of youth untainted by the grind of daily conforming.

Perhaps we should not just equip our young with the confidence to dream, but to teach them the importance of persevering even when those dreams fade in the harsh reality of the workplace. We should teach them to write their dreams down daily, and keep asking honest questions whenever their life-paths start deviating – if they have changed their dreams and passions, that’s still fine; but if they have lost it, our gentle voices should come echoing, like sirens calling sailors, not to their deaths, but to come back to being true to themselves, instead of being true to the world.

I May Be Small ....

Yes, I may be small ... But I am the Boss, says Daniel's one-sie on his first month celebrations yesterday. I guess we haven't got round to tell him about God; one day, he'll learn. He'll also learn that mommy's milk is not the best thing this world can offer, that being woken to eat is not the most terrible thing to happen to anyone, that being burped is not some strange ritual torture that mommy and daddy inflicts on poor baby. It's quite fun to imagine little conversations in his head when he stares at us.

Today, we brought him out for a walk round the estate. He slept through most of it, oblivious to the beauty of the world around him. Sometimes, I wonder if he still wishes he was back in the warm dark womb. And that makes me wonder about our own state. While we saved by the blood of the lamb, and heaven awaits us, do we still cling on to the finite and miniscule pleasures of this world as if heaven is going to be but a strange bad choral dream? When will we wake to the realities of our inheritance?

Strange how the Small Boss teaches us things....

On a Silent Hill

Sometimes it takes the most unexpected things in life to make one appreciate the good stuff. After a week of hard work, I look forward to a quiet time at home with R. However, since the Thing That Wails came along, the weekends are beginning to feel like weekdays ... sometimes even worse.

Tired and worn out, conversations going round in circles about the Origin of the Noise, a.k.a. Why is The Baby Crying? ... in between the moments of wakefulness and half-sleep, I glimpsed at my wife. Tired, sore, soldiering on as a mom, sometimes (to borrow the title of a movie we watched together), crying out in the centre of the world, but not knowing who's listening. And yet, she smiles for me.

That made me think about how far we have come. The photo above was taken on our honeymoon; we had been wandering around like lost sheep on old pastures outside a small (forsaken) town in the Spanish hillsides just outside of Priego de Cordoba. It was a very very quiet day with grey skies, and no one else around for miles. Perhaps a lone sheep or two sprinkled on a distant hills. The cold wintry air biting our skin, and the lone naked tree, like a half-frozen thunder. There, R sits on the rocks, half-smiling.

I remember now, how she, despite my idiotic notions of adventure backpacking, had been nursing me back to health after I fell sick at Granada, (having insisted on eating salted fish on a cold hilltop). She, patient, petite, stuck with me, even though I was poor company.

It's moments like these: on a cold lonely silent hilltop, in hot tropical Singapore with a wailing kid choking on his own spit, that the true test of a wife comes to bear; and I can only see beauty, in so many different ways hidden in the grind of daily living, shine forth like a ray of light against grey skies -- and I know the good days are always here, because she is here. My heart quickens.

Now if only the kid will shut up.