Above all else

Last week, I wrote about "normalising good", that is, setting the dial such that being a blessing to others is normalised; not reserved for Super-Saints, but done by Regular-Joes.  But we can do even more than normalise good. We can  regularise it - by which I mean, do good with a certain frequency. The best way to ensure frequency is to heed the call and meet needs as soon as we hear of it. This sounds simple, but is easier said than done. C.S. Lewis very astutely observed this in his satirical book, the Screwtape Letters, in which he imagines a senior demon teaching a junior demon: "There is going to be some benevolence, as well as some malice, in your patient's soul. The great thing is to direct the malice to his immediate neighbours whom he meets every day and to thrust his benevolence out to the remote circumference, to people he does not know. The malice thus becomes wholly real and the benevolence largely imaginary. Provided that those neighbours he meets eve...

One of the things I like to share about parenting is what I call "normalising good".  One of the best examples I have of this is a video I have of one of my kids at a stationery store. If your kids are anything like mine, there's a good chance that they really like nice stationery, like the ones they have at Smiggle! So in the video, my daughter is a few years old, maybe 5 or 6. She wanders up to a gloriously pink pencilcase in the store and picks it up.  She clearly loves it, and her eyes widen as she looks over all the sparkly bits. She then looks straight at me in the camera, calmly says, "cannot buy right?", and without skipping a beat, wanders right off screen :D Now, it's not like she doesn't like the pencilcase. She obviously does. It's not like she gets praise for not throwing a tantrum. She doesn't. It's not like, as a secret reward, I get her the pencilcase later. I don't. Repeated again and again, this behaviour is normalised. ...

Have you ever been in a meeting and felt that you need to speak up, not necessarily because you have anything to add, but because everybody has already spoken, so you need to speak up too? It used to be that I was quite happy to sit quietly in a corner, and just happily digest what everyone else is saying.  But over the years, one realises that speaking up can be important. We have a responsibility to others to point out when things are not right, or to support someone whose cause important. Speaking up is also a useful way to get due credit for the work done, not just by yourself, but also the team you represent. But there is definitely such a thing as unhelpful speaking up too.  Unhelpful speaking up takes place when we just like the sound of our own voices, and want to emphasise our own importance to the group.  It takes place when we say something just to get "participation points" rather than actually add anything useful.  It takes place when we are criticised o...

I love to read. When I was a kid, my favourite outing would be when my mum would go to Centrepoint, and leave me for an hour or two at the enormous Times Bookshop, with the equally vast MPH just across the same floor.  It wasn't just books. I would read anything that had typeface on it. Random magazines lying around the house, brochures in the mail. I have vivid memories of consistently reading the ingredient list on cereal boxes in the morning while spooning milk into my mouth.  This has ended up with me becoming a great collector of (mostly useless) facts and factoids. Having pointlessly and endlessly scrolled through the "Information" page on Championship Manager, I now know the names of a ridiculous number of English football grounds all the way through to the old Fourth Division.  I can also identify the national flags of most countries, not because of Geography lessons but again because of football matches :D My collection of assorted trivia makes me the internally ...

What is a fruit? In science and botany, a fruit is the seed-bearing structure in flowering plants. The Cambridge dictionary provides a more layman's definition of a fruit as an edible and usually sweet product of a plant or tress that contains a seed or pit. What then is a seed? The botanical definition of a seed is a plant structure containing an embryo of a new plant and some stored nutrients. The Cambridge dictionary's lay definition is similar - an object produced by a plant and from which, when it is planted, a new plant can grow. But what about seedless fruits? There's a shop near my home which sells these enormous and super delicious watermelons that literally have no seeds in them. I love them! But, you know... no seeds, so... is it even a fruit? Why am I writing about seedless fruits? Well, I heard a really good message on the topic of seedlessness from Bishop Oriel from the Philippines recently, and I have since had the opportunity to properly reflect on it. Is th...

It seems to me that I go through cycles of competitiveness in life.  As a child, the evidence suggests that I was insufferable. I would insist on practising primary school assessment papers until I literally got **every question right**. That's right - 100/100. My mum was terrorised into staying up with me and marking my papers, presumably putting up with my tantrums when I made a mistake, and relieved when I finally hit the target.  I even actually did it one particular year's exams. Literally full marks for maths and science. You can't get full marks for English or Chinese composition, otherwise I think I'd have had a fit about that too. I know, all you parents who are heading into PSLE are thinking, WHAT?? So good?? Be careful what you wish for, is what my mum and her marking-induced eyebags would presumably say to you :D That furious competitiveness subsided a little after primary school, because I ended up in a school with even more competitive people, and perfect ...