The Man At The Gate

I quarreled with my dad last night.

I hadn't raised my voice at him in a long time, and it especially didn't help that I took after him in the quick-to-be-hot-headed kind of way.

This started in the car ride home after dinner where my mom was ranting about how don't know who and who's children did what kind of finance or business degree and has don't know what job at some big bank just after graduation.

I'll begin from somewhere in the middle.


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Me: "Why can't I do what I want?"

"What do you want?"

Me: "As I've said, something in the service industry!"

"What exactly in the service industry?"

Me: "What I've been considering all along, hospitality management or something like that!"

"Accountancy and business also requires alot of social services to others right? Why must you go and do something in which the working hours are so irratic that you'll possibly compromise your family and your friends?"

Me: "But in accountancy or finance got to work like a dog for 10-15 years before I become something with lousy pay!"

"Not like it won't be the same in hotel management?"

Me: "AT LEAST I'M DOING WHAT I WANT?!"


***At this point we're already home, and as we walk toward the house we try as best to avoid each other. He's pissed. I'm upset.


"Don't understand why you want to do this kind of thing you know! Never listen to me!"

***My dad has been explaining to me the hardships of working for a long time, he himself knowing how people who put in the same effort can be paid so differently. He's the type that tries to reason me into doing things. And that's a good thing actually.

Me: "My teachers tell me one thing, you tell me the something else!"

"WHAT do your teachers say?"

Me: "That I should do what I want not what my parents want!!!!!!!!!!"

Silence for a moment.

"AIYA then you go and do your social science or whatever in the NUS or SMU faculty of Arts and Social Science la, NO WAY I'm funding you round the world for some lousy and unsteady degree!!!!"

Slams his room door.

"He's bloody naiive!" I hear him shout to my mother from their room.

I sigh.

It sucked so much at that point, heart and mind so conflicted.

"God why does this have to happen!? I hate this so much!"

I turn on my computer and see my brother online, and I began pouring out what just happened to him.

If there's one guy in the world who can reason better than my dad or sis, my sis being a lawyer mind you, and I've said this before, it's my brother.

There's never going to be enough admiration and love I can have for him. He always has the right words and meaning to make me think clearly for myself. And he isn't on my side most the time.

Well I'm not going to add another long conversation and will cut a long story short.

I'll just quote the part that struck me the most.

Paul: "Do you know how hard daddy and mommy had to work so that we could live as comfortably as we did?

I'm living by myself here in australia and I have to pay water, gas, electricity, power and food bills and it's really very very expensive.

We're really blessed and daddy is just speaking from a point of experience.

Don't you want to have a steady profession that will enable your family to grow up like we did?"

The last line really made me ponder super a lot.

"enable your family to grow up like we did?"

And in my conclusion, I decided that I really do want my kids and my wife to have a comfortable life, possible one better that I grew up with.


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This morning as my dad drove me to work we both apologised to each other and I began to see things from his side more too. And we had a good long chat about working life.

Well mainly from his side.


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This is growing up.

Adult hood isn't "going to be" anymore, it's here already.

Guess I wasn't prepared enough for it and still am in the i'm-still-a-kid-everythings-going-to-be-alright kind of mood.

We'll I hope everything will still be alright for me, but from here out I'm on a limb; it's my decisions now that will decide my future.

My decisions.

It feels totally new having to plan for what's ahead.

I wish someone had told me earlier it was going to be so hard.

But I was just looking through the ACJC Annual the other day in the office, an even though I've read it and heard it so many times, it always means so much more the next time I read it.


THE MAN AT THE GATE

I said to the man
Who stood at the gate of the year,
“Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.”

And he replied,
“Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God
That shall be to you
Better than the light
And safer than a known way!”

So I went forth
And finding the hand of God
Trod gladly into the light.

I just realised that I've never seen the last part of the saying before!!!!!!!

The Annual never printed it, its only on the internet!

Guess it's cos it's the part I'm supposed to figure myself only when I have done the prior.
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Dear God, give me the faith to place my path into Your hands.

I await the light.