The Joy Luck Club

Every time after my mum and I disagrees or argues, I think about the movie ‘The Joy Luck Club’. I’m not sure why the movie makers called it that but I gather it’s got to do with some direct translation of some Chinese saying.

How the movie relates to me though is the wedge in the relationships between the mothers and the daughters in the movie. Like the movie, the wedge is the different lifestyle, culture and country they each spent their youth to adult life in. But the wedge is also the similarity in the patterns of choices they each make – like mother, like daughter, there’s a same thread in the choices they make, although in different scenarios.

I broke away from my mother’s patterns of behaviour early enough in my life. Thanks to a crisis, I now have a life I’m proud to say, is a product of my own choices and responses. But, it didn’t come till I was in my early thirties though.

Last December, we asked my mum if she could come live with us for a while to help look after our newborn baby. She said yes. I wasn’t sure how long she would stay for this time because efforts in the past to make her honour her 3 -6 months visit were unsuccessful. The last two times she’s visited, her stays were cut short. Twice it was a result of an argument between her and myself.

This time, many arguments happened but she stayed despite many times threatening to leave. This time, my weapon is my newborn baby girl, Ella. She’s the reason why mum stayed longer than 3 months. She’s the source of happiness for mum, who made that very clear. It is not me. I on the other hand, is like a stranger to her, she claims. She doesn’t ask to spend time with me but she expects me to do that. She has lots of expectations which she doesn’t speak about until we have a blown up argument over something small. She pants it all up and then, like a bottle of coca-cola shaken up, she spills it all out. I on the other hand, am too busy to stop to talk to her or to be creative in engaging her. I already have to be creative in engaging my 5 year old, my 9month old, and my clients. I don’t need really want to have to parent my parent either, if that is to put it bluntly.

This year, my sister’s daughter also came to live with us to study in Australia. My mum pampers her, much to my disagreement. She claims I’m jealous and I should let her show her love to her grand daughter if she wishes. That’s alright if mum doesn’t live under the same roof. But pampering a grand daughter who lives under the same roof means she’s going to undermine my niece’s character growth and maturity. So there goes another wedge driven into our already fragile relationship. The relationship that is only held together by my baby daughter, so it seems.

Mum claims I am a horrible person – that I’m not a nice person. When my niece said this evening that she thinks I’m a nice person, that I’m patient and kind, mum said, that’s the first she’s heard. She claims that others do not know me like she does. That others have not seen the other side of me. My niece has seen the other side of me. Who I am at home is who I am with others. I don’t always have to assert myself with others as I have to with mum because I don’t find myself clashing with someone’s thought processes as much as I do mum’s. She doesn’t give me credit where credit is due. She hates my guts, my confidence, my assertiveness, my voice – the voice she never had.

When will we ever see eye to eye? When will mum ever credit me for who I am? When will she agrees with me like my friends agree with me? Isn’t that what every daughter wants from her mother? Sure, when I was a child, nurturing and security was what I needed and she was the best with that. She took me everywhere I wanted, gave me almost everything I wanted within her abilities and budget. She did everything for me and I never had to lift a finger at home. She still does all the housework except that I am no longer a little child needing only to be fed and to be fussed around. Without that, we don’t have a relationship. We don’t look at the world the same way. We have different parenting styles. We have very different outlook on life. We are like chalk and cheese.

But mum will never have her own home where she can do what she likes. Unlike many older people I know who have their own abode to do whatever old people like, mum will never have that priviledge to. I wish I could give her a house she could call her own and she could live on her own but the closest she will have is a granny flat down stairs our house in the Gold Coast. I will have to try and not say much about what she does with that space there and I will. But till then, we have to share this little 3 bedroom house with her and my niece… and it’s hard when mum stashes away incredible amount of junk I would normally throw in the bin.

I know mum is still unhappy with me for throwing out her stashes of tissue paper or kitchen towels that she claims she wants to reuse for cleaning the floor because they are not very dirty, the sauce in the fridge that was almost 2 months old (that still tasted good) and a whole bunch of things I've told her to stop doing. Hence here I am writing this long block to process it all while the rest of the household sleeps...

Investing in Education

The one thing my dad never failed to get through to us children, is that education is an investment. I grew up hearing that all my life. Hence he poured money into our education and as I grew older, I poured money into educating myself. But an investment means it must give returns. And normally, the world views return in monetary form, at least in economics anyway. So, if I don't use my education to bring income, then it's considered a waste - it is a useless investment. That's how my mind thought for many years. And economics also thought me about opportunity loss - the forgone opportunity when one resource is used in another way. So the guilt of calculated monetary loss became the source of my motivation and decisions for many many years. Sure economics also brushed on intangible assets and intangible opportunity loss but it was all very airy fairy so not much attention was given to it.

But, there is more to education than monetary returns and it is still a good investment even if it is not income producing. The socialisation and institutionalisation of education helps to integrate a person into a culture and society, bringing a sense of belonging and identity. Even if the person becomes a full-time mum at some later stage, that cultural impartation is important for institutionalising future generation. Education has given me the words to speak and the tools to understand this world I live in.

I'm sure my dad saw investment only as monetary and social status but that doesn't matter now. The main thing is, I'm glad for the education I've received and the education I've put myself through. I'm thankful for dad's grounding eventhough it may have been from a skewed motivation. I'm writing this because once upon a time, I looked at dad's intention as self-serving because in the chinese culture, investment to him means us children have to return the responsibility of looking after our parents in their old age. Not that I have an issue with that but I have an issue with the self-serving part!

Anyway, I can now truly say, whatever dad's intentions were, it does not matter because it has served me well too - both monetary and non-monetary wise.

Self-employed or be employed?

I must admit blogging took a grip of me at one stage and I was aware that I was spending too much time on it. So I took the cold turkey approach and stopped completely. But I've always loved to journal and knew that someday, I'll return.

Now almost 2 years after my last blog and another kid later, I'm hoping to venture a lasting return to blogging.

I just read my last posting and thought... wow, I don't think I can live that out. Somewhere in between then and now, we've increased our mortgage and had another child. What is more important now is to spend more time with my children and work from home if I can. And counselling from home is a bit tricky...

With another child in tow, I'm finding it increasing difficult to return to work for an employer. Not because there's no job, nor is it because I can't find a suitable job. I just don't think I'll be happy even if it's what I love doing, and, eventhough I have the help of my mum who has offered her her availability indefinitely for this first year. Maybe it's that streak in me that doesn't like to be bossed around. And there's an element of that if I'm an employee whatever level I'm on. If I work my way up to the top, I'm still a puppet to someone who is waiting on me to deliver their profits or their commitments to another source of stakeholder.

If I work for myself I don't have the responsibility of meeting someone else's agenda... I do not have an agency contract... yes, it's coming back to me now what I learnt in my Economics and Accounting degrees. I can do my own thing, work when I want to and take a holiday whenever I wish to. I can do things my way and not have to follow someone else's. However, I don't earn any income if I don't work.

On the other hand, working as an employee in an organization not controlled by myself means I get a constant stable wage and a few other incentive perks. The trade off is a stipulated leave entitlement, contractual fixed income and having less autonomy than working for myself.

I still like working for myself. I guess I value freedom more than I value security. But I've also come to be aware that if I go too much with my whims and fancy when it comes to work, I won't go too far. That if I don't have the 'stayability' in the one thing I'm doing and be consistent, I will grow old and not achieve much.

Hence it's my next dilemma - what do I want to commit my limited time to? I've been thinking:
1) I can do accounting and bookkeeping services
2) I can work on building up my clients in counselling
3) I can become a full-time share trader, and finally
4) I could also do a web business offering my financial organizational skills - mainly cashflow management I'm thinking about.

I would love to someday do something creative like run a restaurant or a boutique selling beautiful things that I like but I'll have to get a loan for that and have an initial capital. That's not possible at the moment coz of we've got huge mortgages now. I'm not hugely creative but I do have creative flair that seems to come in spurts... strange.

Lastly, do I need to work? Can't I just not think of work and just look after the children full-time 24x7? Well, no. Firstly, we can't afford for me not to pull my weight in the finances due to our huge mortgage and secondly, it'll drive me insane. We could sell our properties but I think we're at the peak of our income earning years and I would not feel totally comfortable foregoing those opportunities.

Well, that's where I am right now in my life. I want to work for myself and not be employed. I want flexibility and I need to be consistent and committed to one thing and build it to something substantial. I believe I need to give it at least 5-10 years to build it.

A Holistic Living

I was thinking of calling this post 'A Spiritual Crisis' but when I thought it through (in the shower), I realised that it's not only a spiritual crisis, because the spiritual aspect has a flow-on effect on the physical and emotional well-being.

My spiritual crisis is the tension I am feeling with letting-go of my reigns. Letting go of my control over things. I would love to follow my heart and leave accounting TOTALLY but I may be holding on to a very fine thread-it's probably all the security I need but nonetheless, a security in every way. It's still not letting God full reign to do it His way. Perhaps, to put it in some context, it's like when someone distorts a truth and claims, "it's a version of the truth". Truths have no versions. God in control has no other versions besides Him in the driver seat and me in the passenger seat... not my hands on the gears, or my foot on the brakes... anyway, you get the gist.

It's doing what I can do, to the best of my ability, without the worries. That sounds like a great deal but why is it so hard to do? Worrying is such a gravitational force that if left alone will leave us going round and round the centripetal force - a bit like a rat on a treadmill. It must take another greater force to change the tangent of the action. Therefore it must take work and effort on my part to not let worry spin me into a ball.

That will in turn leave me with more to give my family, myself and for others, both with my time, my emotions and my physical energy.

Role Modelling

There's been quite a bit written recently about masculinity reconstruction - ie. Men have to learn to be more emotionally attuned, more connected with their children, be around physically more than their fathers, who were too busy to be involved, showed no emotions and when they did, was usually anger and spoke more criticisms than it was worth. So, due to the lack of good role modelling, men are struggling to define their role.

As a woman, I find that it's not only a phenomenon with the men. I can think of the many areas I feel inadequate about because of my lack of role modelling in my life. I can say this now with the knowledge that the inadequacies I often feel stems from that. I too have to reconstruct my feminity and my role in society.

Mum was great in as much as she could possibly be. But having been an orphan whose adopted parents died by the time she turned 8, and living with relatives who ill-treated her, mum had no role model herself. She didn't know how to socialise, she has a low self-esteem of herself, she was never one to be in the limelight for anything. She still thinks lowly of herself - not in a healthy way but in an unhealthy way. Whilst I consider her a matyr, she sees it as something she does because she has no choice. And that's probably true. She becomes a matyr because that's the only way she could find significance because she doesn't think she is worth anything else to anyone. How tragic. The more tragic thing is, that thought is now so ingrained that it's almost impossible for her to change without much pain. Pain I'm not sure I want to be the one inflicting.

Anyway, back to role reconstruction... isn't that something all of us struggle with? Maybe there might be some very blessed ones out there who had great role models. I tend to meet lots without, male or female.

My kind of Music

There are times when I wish I had grown up more emersed in the music of my teenage era - the 80's music. It's always when we're at Karaoke functions. But even now, I don't go seeking those music to listen to when I want to relax or unwind. I go to Josh Groban. I could have his same DVD playing in the background the whole day while I work at home.

When I was growing up, I stayed away from the pop and rock music coz anything that wasn't christian music had the potential to be satanic. That was the emphasis in church youth programs then. Not sure if they still do that now in christian youth programs. I suppose I've now learnt to discern not to throw the baby out with the bath water. Anyway, I never had any close affinity to any pop/rock singers, music or bands. Whilst I wasn't totally shielded from it, I know very few songs from the 80's and wouldn't have a clue who sang them even if they sounded familiar.

Now in my thirties, I still only have a handful of pop singers and songs that I like. I seem to have skipped the whole pop scene and gone straight to contemporary classical - if that's what you call someone like Josh Groban, Russell Watson & Bocelli.

My current favourite is Josh Groban. He just captivates me with his voice, the passion in his face when he sings, his ability to play different musical instruments well. Maybe I'm just not musical and when I see someone as talented as that, it just makes my jaw drop. Plus, he's easy on the eyes.

I just played his DVD, "Live at the Greek" for my visitors (who are into music) today. I was surprised they've never heard of him but they are in the late 50's or early 60's and he is in his 20's! They were just as impressed at what he does.

I enjoyed Awake just as much as his other earlier albums and I would love to hear him write and sing a piece of music that has much impact as the acclaimed 'You Raise Me Up' in his next album.

I Hate Accounting

I really do. I hate accounting. I'm keeping my one client because it's a good source of income but I absolutely hate the stress of checking figures and having to be pudentic about everything (so picky - eeks!) - I hate being paranoid about things. Is it just me or are all accountants like me - paranoid people? People that like to be in-control. It's so opposite from my other career - counselling.

My latter career tries to heal a person from being a perfectionist and my former career creates a perfectionist!!! No wonder I've been so stressed lately. The tension within me is slowly taking the toil on me and I'm going to have to choose one or the other or risk having a multiple personality disorder!

But giving up my accounting client means I'll have to work full-time as a counsellor to make up for the income loss and put my son in childcare full-time. That's the other tension. I don't really want to have my son in a daycare 5 days a week but I don't really know what to do with my time with him either when I've got him at home. I really do feel really guilty about putting him in full-time care. On the other hand, I don't really know how to fill my time with him and also feel guilty about not keeping him occupied enough. What should I do with a 3 year old day in and day out besides playing with the same toys, watching the same programs and going to the same shops???

Now, know what I mean about becoming a perfectionist?! Someone please help me with ideas on what to do with a 3 year old in a country town where nothing much happens. Lots of outdoors but I'm not a big outdoor person. I could stay indoor (not necessary at home) the whole day and for weeks and months and it would not bother me.

1-2-3 Magic

Well, I am impressed. It has worked. I think what I like about the method is that it's very easy to use and has only very few pointers to remember. The main pointers were - No Talk, No Emotion. Give 3 warnings for them to self-regulate their behaviour and to accept that they have to stop a bad behaviour, then follow through with a consequence after the count of 3 (with about 5 seconds in between each count of bad behaviour). Punishment must not be hitting, spanking and have no yelling. Just very matter-of-factly deliver a punishment without any emotions (anger, frustrations, yelling etc) after the count of 3 (with time given for child to stop behaviour and self-regulate). Isn't that easy? Then as time goes, parent lessen the counting and increase ignoring behaviours that are not big issues (referred to as Big Rocks) in the family.

Well, I must say, I left very beaten up about my parenting abilities and am feeling very much in-control and empowered now. So thanks to 1-2-3 Magic!

I think what works about the method is its simplicity. The other thing is being focussed on parenting. When I'm at a loss, I call on the methodology of 1-2-3 magic and I have a focal point for my parenting and it helps. I helps that I am not fumbling and tearing my hair out. It helps that my son knows who is in-charge. The best part is, there's no threat, no fear invoked, no physical abuse inflicted on the child.

I just don't agree about canning. I'm sorry that Christians interprete the bible verse "Spare the rod and spoil the child" literally. That is so wrong. People think they are doing the child a favour by spanking them. Often, it's because they are at a loss as to how to discpline their child as well as it's the only method they know from past experience.

Wealthy Christians - is that contradictory to being a Christian?

So I say I am a Christian. What does that mean to me? It's one of those things that mean different things to different people. Some call themselves a Christian because their parents are Christians. Some believe they are Christians by virtue that they go to church. Others call themselves Christians because they had a spiritual awakening of some sort to the salvation offered through Jesus Christ and attend church to meet other Christians who share this encounter.

I am a Christian because I have had one of those spiritual awakening experience. Still, the notion of what does being a Christian mean differ amongst those that have made that spiritual response to commit their lives to the Lord Jesus Christ and there are vast differences in what we believe. I am specifically talking about the issue of wealth creation here.

Some believe that Christians should be as poor as a church mouse as they live a non-materialistic life wanting of nothing but the basic needs to live and to share the gospel. Others believe they should be wealthy and in positions of influence so that they can make a difference, help the poor and further the gospel with their wealth and influence. The first category believe they live by faith and wait for God to provide - however that may be. The second category believe that they live by faith believing that God will provide for the poor and under-priviledge through them.

So, is it presumptuos to believe that God would want to use us to provide for the poor and under-priviledge? Does not the birds and the flowers in the field that Jesus described not an analogy for all Christians that we should not worry about what we should wear and what tomorrow will bring? So why should we worry about the providing for the poor and under-priviledge? How will God provide for these people if not for other people providing for them? If Christians don't provide for them, will non-Christians?

Much as I believe in God as a miracle maker, I have always seen him at work through people and the existing things around me. I have never seen things falling of the sky like the Isrealites did with their manna. I have never seen things appear from thin air. I have never experienced a miracle of that sort. But I have experienced miracles in many ways. Things happening that would have been more than mere coincidences. Things that in my mind would have been impossible, became possible. Things that I cannot explain except know that God holds all things in His hands.

So will God need me to bring about His miracles. He probably doesn't. But, would He use me to bring about His miracles if it was available to be used. I would think so. God wastes nothing. Would the lack of available resources mean God will be resourceless and His works and plans impeded? I don't think so, because He is the best steward there is in the entire universe. Let's not forget, He's also all-knowing unlike us. So with perfect knowledge, He could do what no one else can ever do, make the perfect plan, yet use us, and all our available resources. So should we worry about being wealthy - no. But should we desire to be wealthy - why not? Should we lose sleep over our wealth - no coz we were told not to worry about things but to trust the Lord in all circumstances. But should we dream and think about wealth - why not?