Be brave, be good, never walk alone

As part of an alumni club association's activities, I volunteer as a mentor for university and polytechnic students.  Last year, I had a batch of Temasek Polytechnic students, and I've just completed this year's programme with a batch of NTU students. They sent me and my co-mentor a heart-warming set of individual thank you notes so, here's my note in return!

======

Dear J, J, M, P and Y (in alphabetical order...)

Thanks for spending your time with J (another J!) and me over the last half-year.  It's been an odd sort of experience, since so much of it was conducted via Skype due to the Covid-19 situation.  Still, we did manage to meet up in person a number of times.  I really appreciate the thank you notes you sent - they are really nice, and I look forward to meeting again after the circuit breaker period is over.

I thought long and hard about what concluding advice I had, especially since you have already heard much about what J and I believe about work and life in general.  There's no end to good advice, so I reflected on what are the few things I would have wanted someone to remind me of when I was finishing up my studies.  So here they are:

1. Be brave!

The world is a scary place.  Not so much because it is dangerous, but because there are so many decision points, which threaten to hurl us off in irreversible trajectories once we've made our choice.  When you approach these crossroads, be brave! 

When I first met my wife, so many people liked her.  Better-dressed, smarter brains, smoother talk, and certainly more mature than me.  Thank God I was brave enough to ask her out!  I don't know why she ever decided I was a good idea, but hey, it worked for me :D  Later on, my then-girlfriend, now-wife told me to join this particular competition.  Again, I was up against better dressed (one of the judges even told me "you really need to get a better jacket"!), smarter, smoother and more mature people.  I thought to myself, there is absolutely no way I can win this, what's the point?  She told me, just go for it.  To my utter amazement, I won.

I got married less than a year after I started working.  I had my first kid a year later, and the second 2 years thereafter.  Of course there were thoughts about, are you sure?  So soon?  Almost none of your friends are doing that.  You have no savings and your career has just started.  But, be brave - become a husband, become a father.  And boy, lots of mistakes along the way, but I've never regretted it for a moment.

In my career, I wasn't brave enough at first.  I stayed in the same place, doing the exact same job for 7 years.  Every time they offered a rotation, I said no, I'm good at this, I don't want to have to impress a new boss, maybe my promotion will come this year.  So I'm staying put.  One day I sat in my office, realised I was not doing anything really different from my first year, and hadn't learned as much as I should have.  From then onward, I took every opportunity to rotate (not necessarily job hop, which I personally don't think is a great idea) and often even take on roles I had no real idea how to do.  And through all the chaos, mess-ups, failures and occasional "we did it!"s, what an exciting ride it's been!

So.  Ask the girl (or guy) you like out.  Join the competition you think you can't win.  Become the husband and parent you dream of being.  Try the job or project you don't know how to do.  Look, it won't always work out obviously.  But be brave!

2. Be good!

The world is often a nasty place.  It is a broken world, filled with broken people, so it's not surprising that to win the things of a broken world, people must often do regrettably broken things.  

I don't mean to say that we should all try to get along, singing kum-ba-ya.  Sometimes it is necessary to be unreasonable.  George Bernard Shaw once said "Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world.  Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves.  All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people."

To me, being good means acting with integrity.  Tell the truth, don't exaggerate, be honest with yourself and others, don't take credit for things you didn't do, give credit to the people who did do the thing, don't badmouth people behind their backs.  I think a good test is to live the kind of day that you'd be happy to honestly narrate to your seven-year-old kid when you get home, look at yourself in the mirror as you're brushing your teeth, and then get a peaceful night's sleep.  

In my work, I've had to tell people that their work is not good enough, and in some cases, that we're letting them go, or that they ought to leave.  The first time I did it, I didn't do it well.  I was opaque, I was brusque, and I just wanted to get it over with.  I was more concerned about how I was going to deal with an awkward situation, than how the other person would receive the news.  How selfish right?  Don't do that.  If something isn't working out with someone or something, that's the truth.  It has to be fixed.  But approach the situation with love.  Really.  Be genuine about wanting to help the person.  It's rehabilitation, not punishment.

What about people who are better than you?  Don't be jealous, learn from them, give credit to them.  If you're their colleague, celebrate their successes.  If you're their boss, promote them!  Even if you're being completely selfish - you'd rather be supplanted by a capable person you helped on the way up, than have it happen with a person you tried to kick off the ladder.

So be brave, and be good!

3.  Never walk alone!

It's no use being brave, good or even amazingly successful if you're alone on the peak.  There's an old saying that no man is an island.  It's good advice.  Learn to rely on others.  Be unafraid to be vulnerable.  As an introvert and oftentime loner, I have generally found it hard to follow my own advice in this respect, but... 

Whoever you marry - pool all your money.  Don't have his and hers accounts.  Tell him or her all your secrets.  Open up your life.  Lean on each other.

Wherever you work - trust and rely on others' expertise and judgment.  Don't do everything yourself.  Be honest about what you don't know.  Let them see how they can help you.  Lean on each other.

Be deliberate in making and building friendships.  Share your successes and your failures.  Make yourself vulnerable.  Lean on each other.

Even if people let you down in the end, better that you walked together at least for a while, than to have journeyed alone all this while.

But it's not only about people.  There will be times when it seems you're all alone - perhaps after a quarrel or a loss of some kind.  In the end, there's also one road we walk without anyone beside us, and that's when our time on this earth is up.  But even then, we need never be alone.  Put your trust in God who knew you before you were born, prepared all the good works in advance for you to do, and wants to walk with you through it all.  Don't tell yourself, I don't need to rely on Him, I can do this myself.  You'll find that you can't.  Put all your weight on Him - He is strong enough to hold you, but you'll only know that when you let go and lean into Him.

Finally - put it all together.  Be brave, be good, and never walk alone.  Before you start anything or make any decision, pray - don't walk alone.  Be brave when you hear the answer - go.  Be good to those around you as you go - leaning on each other and giving credit when you're done.  And finally, thank God, because it wasn't just you.

It has been a joy to walk with you this past half year or so.  May you find and fulfil the purposes for which you were made.  I believe in you!