Pivoting


In a world of buzzwords and memes, one of the buzziest words in recent months has been “pivot”. 
We’re pivoting to the blockchain (another buzzword!).  The company’s marketing programme has pivoted away from traditional media.  We’re leveraging on our focus in integrating bolt-on acquisitions to pivot to a new growth trajectory.  With all the levers, bolts, pivots and trajectories, it’s a wonder that the next pronouncement isn’t “Autobots, roll out”!
So I’m jumping on the bandwagon.  In the last 12 months, my life has experienced a gradual yet profound pivot.  To what, you ask?  To the world of er ren shi jie :D
As the kids progress through the mid to late stages of teenage life, we find ourselves less and less occupied with feeding, chauffeuring and tutoring.  The kids go out to the library instead of studying at home.  They hang out with friends after school instead of coming straight back home.  They acquire the independence to answer more and more questions by themselves instead of asking us.
And while I do sometimes feel a twinge of “missing” the old days, all in all… it’s not so bad.  The wife and I have taken up running together, going to gym class together, having our own nice meals, and going off on trips for just the two of us, to places like JB or Bangkok.  It kind of feels like we’re dating again!
When we were young parents, we were given the excellent advice that the core of a family is the marriage.  In other words, a family orbits around the marriage of husband and wife; it shouldn’t orbit around the children.  The children orbit around the stability of their parents, and learn from their example what love means - see how husband and wife love and serve God, husband loves wife, wife loves husband.  In this way, they perceive love as being other-than-me. 
Parent-to-child love is wonderful and essential, and often models selflessness too – but if a child’s primary experience of love is being the recipient of parent-to-child love, then there’s a higher risk that they grow up with a me-centric, “feed me!” worldview – and they go out into adulthood looking for someone to love them.
In practical terms, we strive not to let the family life be dictated by tuition schedules, piano and ballet classes, and tantrums/meltdowns.  Sure, we have our fair share of tuition, piano, ballet and meltdowns.  But if dinner with grandparents is on Friday, then tuition orbits around that.  If Sunday service is in the morning, then piano and ballet classes orbit around that.  If there’s a meltdown just before we leave the home for cell group, then the kid gets dragged out, the parents don’t get dragged back.  If there’s a mission trip out to the wilderness, then even toddlers come along, no excuses for us or them.
And though we sometimes still fail in this discipline, it has helped my wife and me adapt better to the current pivot, when the children, having now orbited around us for these few years, now learn to work out their own trajectories.  Selfishly, I’d love for them to remain as close as possible, even slow down how quickly they’re growing up.  Thankfully, I do have kids who still like to hang around us, and have picked up common hobbies and interests with us, after years of orbiting around us, instead of us orbiting around them.  But I know that just as it was healthy for them to orbit around us when they were kids, when they eventually grow up and marry, their lives have to orbit around their own respective marriages.  And I’m good with that.
Almost 20 years ago, my wife and I got married!  A couple of months ago, I actually lost my wedding ring.  I went for an external meeting, started to fiddle with my ring as usual, and suddenly realized it wasn’t there!  Funny thing is, my wife also lost her ring – but she beat me to it by almost 2 decades, since she literally lost it within a day of our wedding, when we went off on our honeymoon XD
After agonizing over the cost, we finally decided to bite the bullet and get ourselves new rings.  The cost of gold sure has risen a lot in the intervening years!  But for the first time in all these years, we’ve actually got matching rings.  I knew I really loved my wife the day we went together to collect our University results, and I looked for hers before I looked for mine (a story for another day).  And knowing she reads this blog, I’d like her to know I love her even more today, than that first epiphanous day.
And I look forward to this new pivot in our lives, for which I hope we are reasonably prepared – to more lunch dates, JB and Bangkok trips, and weekly gym classes where we gamely try to keep up with all the younger people :D
Contrary to currently popular beliefs about the vagaries and shifting sands of moral relativism, there is such a thing as absolute good.  Family is a Good Thing.  Stick to it.
We love because he first loved us. 1 John 4:19
Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it.  Proverbs 22:6
As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.  Joshua 24:15

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