Monday, March 16, 2009

Don't dig your own grave

As a parent, I can't help but think about how to bring my kid up, what to teach him and how to teach him. Hard skills and knowledge are not easy, but there are many proven ways to obtain that. Like if you want your kid to learn kung fu, you can take him to a local dojo or send him to Shaolin temple. If you want to learn programming, you can self-learn by picking up books, or take courses, just to practice and practice.

For soft skills, that's the hard part. Cos, many of them are easy to understand, but hard to practice consistently, and let alone master them. For example, how to get along with people around you. It is something studied since human beings exist on earth. Talk about relationship, as long as we need to live with people, we can't stay away from it. The worse case is that there are not only many 'theories' in soft skills, many of them are complicated by who the practitioners and the target people are. For example, kids are taught to be honest. But kids have their own characters, when we think about the consequence of being honest, it may not be always good to oneself, especially the punishment for being honest for bad things done whether that was intentionally or not. Also, who do we should tell the truths to? To a priest anonymously, or point your own nose tips and say 'yes! I did it!'?

I think the most difficult part about teaching a kid is about relationship with the opposite sex. Yes, many folks would say kids nowadays are so smart and rebellious that they would not need or listen to what you are going to tell them. They make do the opposite and don't even bother listening to what we said. Well, they got their points, but I doubt any parent would simply not trying to convey their own set of ideology about those of kind boy-girl relationships to their kids. To my ideal situation, I would say the best scenario is that my son is intelligent enough to pick up what's work for him from all sources. Yes, I admit that I'm not a good example or great lecturer on this topic. So, though I will still try to share what I think with my kid in a more subtle way rather than outright 'I told you so' lecture, I would prefer him to digest information from all sources to make up his mind for what should work for him.

I don't even want to think about what would be the worst case scenario for that. I opine that just based one source of information, regardless of how good it may be, it is just not enough to deal with the possible variation of relationship situations. Also, learning from his personal own mistakes will be very painful in many aspects. I would say, just "don't dig your own grave!"

When, I don't know if the following things make sense or not, just wanna think some of them may be what I'm gonna share with my kid in future:

- You can crazy in love with a girl, but don't spoil her to a point that you lose who you are.
- There must be respects 'mutually'. If she doesn't buy it, just retreat.
- Saying 'no' doesn't mean you are wrong. Don't love someone that doesn't deserve your love.
- Don't try to change someone's character. Cos, you will fail.
- Sometimes, it is better to be alone than with someone who make you unhappy.
- There are always more than one side in each story. So, be a good listener and think, don't just talk.
- Love takes time, but lust doesn't take that long. So, think about consequence before you act.
- Conflicts are unavoidable, unless she is a dummy and you want her to be one. No, she won't be one. On the other hand, don't let her to treat you like a dummy.
- Consensus is the key. If you can reach one with your life partner, and you are happy with the consensus. You are blessed!
- Try to look at good things, not just the bad ones. Don't be stupid enough to look for bad things in good things. If you can't find one, it is because there is none. Even if there is, probably those are good things in other people's eyes, not you. So, those are still not good things.
- Love is blind, so you should try to spend some minutes/hours in your day try not to love, but to think from a third person's point of view to analyze what you are doing. Be your own teacher, teach yourself lessons. It is not psycho, it is simply helpful.
- Don't take on other's trouble unless there is a solid mutual commitment.

The last for not but not least....there is always a second choice in things. You are the driver of your own car, don't let the road should you where you have to go ahead. You often can STOP, and may even U turn. So, even there looks like there is only one way ahead. No! It isn't.

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