This is another article in my series of letters to Fighter.
———-
Dear Fighter,
I am amused by your habits. How over the seemingly smallest thing to us adults (like taking away a remote control from you) makes you cry like we had just inflicted the most possible pain ever. I was amused because when these things happen, we adults think it’s a small reason to cry. So much that we often think it’s an overreaction.
Then one day somebody made me see things in another way. That the baby you are hasn’t known any other pain or stress in life. So to us taking away a remote control or not carrying you when you want us to… is trivial. But to you because you know no other pain, it is the worst thing that can ever happen to you.
I understand that now but I have to tell you the truth about the world we live in. The world we live in is an oxymoron. In the course of history you’ll see people do the most cruel things to one another from the Cambodian Genocide to ISIS in present day as I write this letter. Not only has these things happened in the past but they continue to happen today and will continue to in the future as they have throughout history.
In the more civilised societies that we live in, fortunately outright violence is stopped. But here cruelty exists too in a different form. In people shunning another person because he was born different or people betraying one another. It’s a cruel world we live in and it’s the world you will be living in.
The good news is that if you look beyond all this, you’ll see goodness in this world too. For every ISIS there are aid workers who volunteer to go on to the ground to help the people who need help. For every person who shuns or treat someone badly, there is always someone else who will pick up that person and treat him right. Just like in Dumbo.
So this world we live in is an oxymoron. There is good and there too is bad. We will all at one point go through difficult times, sometimes so difficult we think we are at our limits and when you do I want you to remember these 3 things.
1) When bad things happen, they all happen at the same time.
That means you’ll have to deal with an overwhelming wave of bad things at the same time. But it also means that once you get through it, all the good things will come altogether too.
2) That time heals.
Whatever problems, challenges, stress or adversity you will be put through, in time you will overcome them. Just like how you stop crying just 15 seconds after I take away that remote from you.
3) Surround yourself with good people.
The best people you want to spend your life with are the people that you want to spend not just the good times but also the bad times with. They’re the people who will stand shoulder to shoulder with you in times of adversity.
So you see Fighter, it’s okay to cry. It’s okay to cry now as a baby and it’s okay to cry as an adult because life is difficult. Life can be cruel sometimes. What is not okay is for you to give up. For you to pity yourself or for you to think that you won’t be able to overcome this.
Tonight I will take your remote control away from you again so that you’ll always be reminded of the life we all live. A life where we can’t always control what happens to us… and a life where we don’t always get what we want. My hope is that I will be able to teach you to flourish even in a life like that
Love,
Daddy
Timothy Tiah – Co-Founder of Colony, Kuala Lumpur Co-Working Space