Behind the Scenes

I had a productive shopping spree yesterday at Powerplant Mall @ Rockwell yesterday with my brother and my mom. To put a wonderful end to a great shopping spree, we went to Chelsea Market Cafe at The Fort to eat dinner. (http://chelseamarketcafe.com/menus.html)

I got to taste two very interesting dishes. The first one is risotto balls. It is made up of sticky rice used to make risotto, rolled into a ball coated with breadcrumbs, fried to a crisp, and filled with cheese inside. It was heavenly.

The second one was chocolate dipped crispy bacon waffles. The bacon was fried (or baked, I’m not really sure) to perfection, making it really crispy, after which the top half was dipped in rich chocolate. The combination of sweet and salty was perfect for the palate.

Okay, enough about the food, since that is not the purpose of this blog entry.

While having dinner, I could not help but overhear the conversation of the couple over at the next table. (The tables were very close to one another and not because I was being a busybody!) I am not really sure how the conversation started, but somehow, they ended up talking about how people make choices. The guy made a very good point. He said, “Often times, we don’t know what we want, we only know what we don’t want.”

It made perfect sense. This is so true, especially for us fresh graduates trying to look for a job, or high school students applying to university. We are given so many choices and we try to pick those that we should apply for, and almost always end up applying to a multitude of unrelated positions. Whichever one we get is irrelevant, as long as we get something.

We begin to settle. We no longer want to think about what we really want to do. We are ready to do whatever job it is that we don’t mind doing. We all have a mental list of things that we really don’t want to do, such as be a construction worker, a clerk, a cleaner, and all those dead-end low paying jobs. We will accept everything else.

I guess it is true when my friend told me, “ I really respect you. What you are doing is hard, but at least you know what you want to do. Most of us don’t even know what we want.”

I have said countless times that my mom has been neglected by the times. She has long been surpassed by her peers in terms of economic stability and success in life. In high school and university, she was the type to be voted “Most Likely To Succeed, “ but look at her now.

A lot of her friends have now become citizens of the world, well-read, well-traveled, financially independent, with assets to their names, whereas my mom is still tied up in this little dilapidated hellhole.

I have been thinking…. And something struck me. Is it fair for me to make claims that I just made? Is she really less successful?

It all boils back down to how I define success to begin with. Is success characterized by the house you live in, the car you drive, the places you visit, the people you interact with, or the size of your bank account?

In the past, I would have readily said yes. Even until today, a part of me would say yes. But after much thought, it dawned on me that us children could have caused her to be how she is now. Her friends might seemingly lead better lives, but who among them has 4 children? A lot of them are single, only needing to fend for themselves.

Raising all four of us siblings is an achievement enough. She not only raised us but ensured that we all end up capable, responsible, and ready for the world. She is trying hard to teach us to be self-sufficient. During gatherings, we may not show up in the best car, nor are we proud of where we live, nor have fantastic tales of our visits to the renowned cities of the world, but when you see us, you know that this is a family that is able to make it big. That alone is a point of envy that cannot be easily emulated.

Had she not had to provide for four spoiled children, she will have a lot more resources available for her and my dad to enjoy more luxuries in life. I am sure she is not going to fall behind her peers. But she chose to have a family, and successfully raised a family.

Not a lot of assets to her name (most of them are tied up with my grandfather), she has 4 priceless possessions that will forever have her mark. All four of us siblings who inherited her brains and her vocal chords….. our net present value added up is definitely higher than that of any of her friends at this point in time. :P This may be a fairer way of judging the accomplishments of a person. I guess she is still very well in the running of being “Most Likely to Succeed.”

The next time I complain about my mom’s “failures”, I better bite my tongue because I am probably one of the principle reasons for those.