I first became a parent a little more than two years ago. Fighter was born into this world and my life changed. The expectations of a father dawned on me. That I now am no longer a son and a husband, I am now a father and as a father I have to bring up my son well. To teach him the rights from the wrongs in life so he would grow up to be a good man.
It recently dawned on me that over the past two years, my son has taught me as much as I have taught him about life. Here’s the key things that I feel he has taught me:
1) He taught me that an experience is only as good as the company you experience it with.
Fighter loves going to the childrens’ playground. He loves swinging on a swing, going up and down a slide and riding the see-saw. What I notice is that as much as he loves doing all those things, he only likes it when we are experiencing it with him.
Once we left him to play on a slide with us watching from a short distance away and he came around and insisted we join him. When we were by his side again, he screamed, squealed and laughed in excitement to the full experience he had of the playground.
2) He taught me how to find joy in the simplest things in life.
In adult life we constantly seek out the highs we get from buying something new or getting instant gratification when someone comments and likes your picture on Facebook. These things make us happy and gives us a high at least for a while, before we find the need to find something else again to excite us.
Fighter finds constant excitement in the smallest things. He loves cups and he loves just holding them and pretending to drink from them. He has loved them constantly for 6 months or so now and he still shows no signs of slowing down.
It’s not just cups. Sometimes Fighter gets excited by the smallest things. Like when he notices a car that looks like the car his grandfather drives or when he sees a new type of snack he hasn’t tried before.
Fighter loves the smallest things and he finds happiness in the things we take for granted.
3) He taught me that time (not money) is the most valuable thing you can give somebody.
Every day when I leave Fighter to go to work he clings on to me and he cries. He doesn’t want me to go no matter how many times I explain to him that that’s life. That daddy needs to go to work so he can earn money and support him.
To Fighter money doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is that the people who he loves are around him.
4) He taught me that there is no Chinese boy, Indian boy or Malay boy. There is only one type of boy.
Fighter doesn’t know racism. He can tell a difference when someone has darker skin when another, but he never associates that with a person being “different”.
Whether you’re Malay, Chinese, Indian, Nepalese or Bangladesh even. Fighter doesn’t treat you any different. If he likes you, he wants you to carry him. If he doesn’t then it doesn’t matter what your skin colour is, he just doesn’t want you to carry him.
5) He taught me to love things that you truly like, not what people tell you that you should or should not like.
Fighter loves Hello Kitty and he loves carrying womens’ handbags. At first we started telling that handbags are for ladies but he never really cared. Then it hit me.
In life we are constantly battling our personal preferences with what society expects us to like. Boys like action figurines, girls like dolls. Girls like One Direction, guys like U2. If you think about it, that doesn’t make sense. Why must we be told what we like. We like what we like and that’s what makes us individuals.
So today I no longer tell Fighter what to like. I just let him embrace what he does like.
6) He taught me to question everything and to never stop learning.
Fighter just learned to ask questions and he won’t stop asking them. Every day he looks at something and asks us “Mommy… what’s this?”.
Or sometimes he seems affirmation “Mommy… is it a phone?”.
Then he sees another phone and he asks the same question again and again to make sure he gets it right.
7) He taught me that if at first you don’t make it. Try again.
The first time Fighter tried walking. He fell. But he tried again and again. It’s not just walking too.
Every time he sees us eating spicy food he insists on having a try. We tell him that it’s spicy but he whines until we give him a try. Once he has a taste of it he cries until we extinguish the fire in his mouth with water. Immediately after, he asks for it again and again until the whole process repeats itself.
At first I was wondering why our son liked hurting himself then it occurred to me that maybe he just wanted to keep trying until he can understand why is it that even though it’s so painful to eat, we like to eat it all the time.
Timothy Tiah – Co-Founder of Colony, Kuala Lumpur Co-Working Space