A letter to my NS-bound son: I wish you wisdom and strength.

My dearest Mark,

You will be going in to your national service in a short while and I wish I could be there to send you off. Alas this project I am on overseas means we can’t do the father-son driving holiday we were planning for before you enlist.

In the almost 19 years since I became a father, there have been many decisions which were made after deliberating carefully what was good for you and your siblings. Some ultimately proved to be sound ones and others perhaps not so successful, but they were all made with the intention to bring you all up with the right sort of values and moral outlook on life.

This short driving holiday was to have been a great bonding time, the last before you go through what Singaporeans regard as a rite of passage for men. I don’t necessarily agree with all the machismo and so on that comes with that idea, nor with the duration of the whole exercise, but I do accept the part it plays in Singaporean society.

However, this is not a discussion on what’s right or wrong about the National Service.

It is really about the conversations we would have had had we been able to take that holiday. Life is often defined by conversations at critical moments in our lives so let me be take the opportunity from thousands of kilometres away to explore these conversations right here.  It may prove to be a rather one-sided chat and we would be lacking the locale, the beers, the exhausting exploration that goes with holidays, the discovery of hidden treasures and so on, but I think you will understand the motivation and perhaps have a taste of the passion and emotion.

Stand Up for what you believe in
I come from a family that’s never been afraid to stand up for something we believe in. Years ago, your grandmother sat for days in the hot afternoon sun on the median along Jalan Gasing, protesting against the sexually-discriminating practice of paying women teachers less than their male counterparts. As a result, she was sacked and lost many years of service on her record and suffered a drop in her pension. But they finally got their demands met.

Many years later she manned a petition booth at the bottom of Gasing Hill to protest the development of what was supposed to be a green lung for PJ. This time they lost and the condo was built where it still stands today , in my opinion a blight on the landscape.

More recently, she and your Aunty Rosemary became the centre of action when there was a water shortage in Section 5 PJ, with press conferences being called in our family home and the Member of Parliament calling her almost daily to check on the water situation.

In the late 80s, one of your uncles was in the forefront of providing assistance to families of ISA detainees and I provided what little help I could, designing logos and TShirts, taking photos at events and so on. Helping the innocent families who had been torn apart by this draconian and unjust law was just a little thing, but to the families I’m sure it meant more.

Your Uncle Gerard has also made it his life to work for certain causes - he did research in water and resource management along the Mekong, and worked for the UN helping East Timor transition to an independent democracy and more recently has been working on combating AIDs and other communicable diseases in Indonesia.

So, you come from a line of people who perhaps never reached the pinnacle of visibility, but have always tried to live up to certain standards set by your grandparents. It’s not always an easy task, nor a rewarding one (though Gerard does have a nice apartment in a nice part of Jakarta, paid for by the Australian Government!) but it is a satisfying one.

I have confidence in the set of values you have been brought up with and developed on your own. You have always shown yourself to be a good, well-meaning young man and I therefore urge you to live up to those values when you can and when you are asked to. You may not need to do the stuff your grandparents, uncles or even I have done (what little I have) - but I hope you will find your own thoughts and actions through which you can make a stand and push an agenda to improve the lot of people around you. And it all starts with not backing away from the opportunity, and with standing up when those values are challenged.

Sometimes it won’t be easy - and I pray that you will have the wisdom to discern what is right and what needs to be done, and the strength to then do it. Whatever the occasion.

Understand and Embrace failure
We won’t always win. That is the hard truth. There will be things we set out to do which we will fail to accomplish despite our best efforts.

That’s OK. As long as at the end, we can look at things and say, I really did try my best, within the range of things I would ethically do. That last little qualifier is important, I think, as sometimes victories can be won at the expense of our values or beliefs. Whether it’s shifting the blame to someone else, or betraying someone’s trust in order to achieve some goal, I think it’s just not worth it. Through it all, it’s important to be true to your values.

Failure comes in many forms and can be relative to the circumstances. It cannot be measured in certain and absolute terms. Financial richness doesn’t necessarily equate success, for example, as it may simply be balanced out by a gaping hole in other aspects of life. The reverse applies too - that failure isn’t always what it seems.

You’re a creative person and that should ring some alarm bells in this area. For to be a creative person is to shift your values in a direction not many take or appreciate. It may be more important at some point in your life to be true to creative principles and eschew financial reward. Who is to say down which road lies success? Or failure?

There isn’t a clear guide book, an Idiot’s Guide to Failure or whatever. At some forks in our lives when we have to make a critical decision, it may not even be clear then that that is a critical decision with far-reaching consequences. It isn’t that important. What is important is that when we have to make a decision and on one side is lined up our values and ethics and the other is lined up the accoutrements of ‘success’, I hope you will choose the former.

For on the latter side lies momentary gratification. And nothing much else.

Remember I just said there is no clear guide book? Well, there isn’t even always a clear line that divides either side. So here again, I wish you the wisdom to discern and the strength to then stick to your principles.

Remember family. Remember friends.
You’re not really going away. You’re not moving overseas for a few years or something like that. You’ll just be gone for a few months then hopefully we’ll see you every day or every weekend. What you will leave behind is the last vestiges of your teenage life. This experience will change you in many ways, there is no denying that.

You will make new friends, some of whom you will keep for the rest of your life. You will cement some of those relationships with experiences so strong and vivid and life-changing that for years from now, you will recall them with absolute clarity - or hilarity in many cases.

Wherever your life takes you, just remember your family. Remember your friends. Keep both close to your heart where their relationships can warm you.

You never know when a member of your family or your circle of friends will be able to make that little difference in some struggle you may be having. And you never know when you might be that little difference in their life. Either way, do not be afraid to seek help, nor to render it.

That old saying ‘No man is an island’ is absolutely true - and you just heard this from ‘an anti-social b*****d’! Well, that’s what your quiet, pensive father now regards as his personality type! What I’m saying is that you are also defined by the people around you. You may be the trunk, but they are the branches that shape the tree.

And they require work. You need to put in the effort at maintaining relationships. And in this day and age nothing could be simpler. The range of tools at your disposal are phenomenal. You have email, instant messaging, online greeting cards, blogs, Facebook, Twitter, SMS, phone calls… You never know when you could make a difference in someone’s life or when they could, in yours.

I once received a call from a distraught friend whose wife had just committed suicide. He called form thousands of miles away, reaching out to a friend he’d not seen in years. To this day I am not even sure why he reached out to me. But he did. And the time we spent on the phone made a difference in his life, just as it changed mine.

More recently I was called by someone who reached the end of his tether and was contemplating ending it all. An hour later he was more settled and his problems have faded away somewhat - not like our friendship which is even stronger.

In less dramatic circumstances, your cousin Joanna will be moving to Australia soon for her university studies. A few weeks later, her cousin Charmaine will swing by Canberra from where she lives in Sydney, just to check on her and make sure she is OK. I remember how lonely I sometimes was when I moved to Sydney years ago and it was great to have my brother Joe, Charmaine’s dad, there for me. It’s so immensely gratifying to see his daughter extending the same courtesy to another member of the family.

Remember family. Remember friends.

And so here I have to end.

There is more to write, but I think I will let you absorb this lot first. After all, life is an ongoing experience and if you lived some of what  I wrote above, we will have many opportunities to explore it together.

In the meantime, I wish you wisdom and strength - two of the most important attributes a person could ever ask for.

Be well, my dear son. And be wise and strong.

With love,
your Dad