We celebrate Father’s Day today in Singapore so I thought to take a break from the usual conversations on ODR, the Mediation Convention, and Asian mediation trends to meditate on issues closer to my heart.
Not unlike the experience of many other dads in other countries, the past 3 months have been intense. G&T could not go to school and this became the longest continuous stretch of time we spent together. Wifey & I tried every day to find creative ways to engage them and shield them from the sentiments of fear, stress, and paranoia in the adult community.
The result was many fun and silly memories. My favourite were the water-gun battles which inevitably always led to loud screaming and laughter and everyone becoming drenched. Half the time I wondered if my neighbours would not report us for having too much fun during this serious period.
But, my gut insisted that precisely because this period was so intense, we needed to create opportunities to cheerlead. We do not know what may be the longer term effect of Covid-19 on the psychology of our children. As G&T are both under 8, they will likely not recall the details. But, studies have shown that children feel more than they can express. It’s the dents that events make on their sub-conscious that more deeply influence their capacity for resilience and optimism.
In 1985, my dad’s newly started tofu factory was badly impacted by Singapore’s first post-independence recession. To save, he and mum ate one meal a day. To reduce labour costs, they took on more roles in the factory, working on the production floor in the day time and completing the administration and accounts at night.
I was about T’s age at that time and was completely oblivious to Dad’s struggles. All I recall was that Dad worked 14-hour days 6-days a week, smoked a lot, and always made time to bring me for a dinner-date every Saturday. The sacrifices and stress he felt then was only confided to me when I was about to start my own family.
Dad didn’t need to read books and articles about fatherhood or go through a post-graduate degree on education to learn what he needed to do. What he did, he did out of a natural sense of love and duty.
I have encountered countless instances of such love from fathers in my work as a mediator.
Fathers giving up their entire retirement fund to pay for their children’s medical treatment, however dire the prognosis. Fathers uprooting from their native environment and changing careers to take on the responsibilities of shared custody and maintenance. Fathers risking their safety and comfort to build businesses in foreign lands to provide their children with a financial security they never had.
None of these fathers would likely qualify to be saints. In my mediations, I also saw their vulnerabilities and their fallibilities. But, in many ways, it was the confluence of weakness and silent heroism that moved me.
When we become dads, we all aim to be Superman for the infant in our arms. But, that love-driven aspiration is always filled with a tremendous fear that we can’t do enough, that we are not good enough. Only a fellow-dad can truly empathise with this feeling.
Love is when you recognise that you will make mistakes, some that will make your child really angry and disappointed with you, and yet you never give up. Because many people may know how to be a father but no one else can be your child’s father.
Because the child doesn’t know all that you feel and do, they will likely never say thank you. At least not immediately. The spiritual reward comes from just seeing their smiles and hearing their laughter.
For me, the spiritual sustenance (to put up with the less pleasant crying and screaming parts of fatherhood) comes from peeping at G&T’s angelic sleeping faces every night. EVERY night. That is the sight that keeps me passionate about a job that means promoting peace so more dads can enjoy this beautiful sight with their own children.
Fatherhood has nourished my work as a mediator and vice versa.
Fatherhood has helped me to better empathise with the fathers in my cases. To see the many layers of emotions and humanity in every corporate executive, doctor, lawyer, accountant, soldier, and engineer. Mediating has reminded me that the beauty and dignity of each role is tied intrinsically with how we regard and play that role. It has taught me to celebrate the paths our children learn to take and work to ensure that they walk those paths with kindness and dignity.
Fatherhood has helped me to second my own need for validation and prioritise the welfare of others. When parties behave in a childish way, they may need firm leadership. But, beyond telling them what to do, the greater mission is to show them that the worth of their message shines through when they can remove the self-destructive venom. Because of the impetus of self-determination, mediating has given me the insight to moderate my intervention and to take my children’s victories as my own. When they outrun me or beat me in chess, my pride in them exceeds my own embarrassment. When parties laugh and say, “Hey, we could have done this by ourselves!”, I similarly feel greater vindication than insult.
The challenges confronting fathers will continue to mount in the next months. We are far from out of the woods in the battle against Covid-19 and many businesses continue to teeter. Lives and livelihoods are still threatened.
Still, as my dad reminded me by his example, in hard times, we discover fatherhood for the gift that it truly is.
Unpredictable as the ending to this pandemic may be, we, dads, retain some control of how the period will be recalled by our children.
Thank you for working to preserve the beautiful consciousness of our young.
Happy Fathers’ Day!
