Ian On The Red Dot

There are days when you get careless. You let your mind and thoughts wander down a particular road. You start seeing the world through cracked lenses - everything good fades into the background, every mistake, every transgression takes center-stage.

You don’t want to be ungrateful. You don’t want to be angry.

Yet you can’t help it.

The gates open and every demon, every raw twisted emotion is unleashed.

You start making distinctions to justify the turmoil in your heart.

Doing your duty is different from making sacrifices.

Inconveniencing yourself is different from making sacrifices.

You scream - you cannot abdicate your responsibilities by emotional blackmail.

You cannot say we’ve been spoiled and a better child would be less demanding.

You cannot be the one demanding more from us.

You can actually. But if we meet those expectations or even exceed it, you cannot turn around and say we have no right to not walk in step with you anymore when we are ahead.

We should both expect better from each other. We should be iron that sharpen iron.

But you chose us, we didn’t choose you. The onus is for you to lead. Be our leaders. Our mentors. Don’t demand our respect. Earn it.

Yes, we are older. Maybe even more mature. That does not mean we must pander to your emotional needs.

That sadness is something we all must bear.

I have an uncle who I was quite close to when I was young. He was the uncle who brought me to see movies and football matches at the National Stadium. I’ve always thought that he didn’t have much of a hobby except trying to figure out the next winning number for 4D - he would record down past winning numbers in a spreadsheet and try to analyze them. Recently, as I thought about my uncle and the big part he played in my life, and in a way still does, I realized he had a rather unique hobby - taking part in competitions.

I realized my uncle was a serial competition winner. I have another friend like my uncle who would take part in all sorts of competitions like those you hear on the radio, find in the New Paper, read about in magazines like 8 Days and where you need to collect stuff.

Over Chinese New Year, when visiting him, I asked him about this hobby of his. My sister created the image below which gives one of the reasons why he takes part in such competitions.

To my Uncle, the prize of the competition isn’t important. It is the taking part in it or more importantly the winning of it.

Apparently, there are forums dedicated to competition junkies like my uncle. If anyone knows of any, please do share in the comments section.