My brother went out with my father when he was a child, the return trip was very hot, someone was selling ice on the road, my father asked him if he wanted to eat, he shook his head and said, “I’m not hot, I don’t want to eat ice.” After returning home my father wrote a diary, saying that the child is very understanding, know that the family is poor, even if you want to eat still answer not.
My brother made the choice to satisfy his dad rather than his own desires. My brother is the epitome of a child of my generation. How can you make a choice when you can’t even get enough to eat and survival is the only goal? Even if you were given a choice, you knew which option was what the adults wanted.
You think the child is making choices, but there are two kinds of choices he makes: one is really knowing what he wants; the other is that his choices are to satisfy the adults, not himself, like my brother and my daughter are doing.
The brother who dares to want, to dream the biggest dream
My son and daughter grew up in different generations, and they had many choices, but the two children grew up with very different reactions to the matter of “making choices”.
My brother is very egotistical, always choosing the best, the biggest, the most expensive, always going back and forth, indecisive. My sister, on the other hand, is very determined, without a trace of hesitation, always choose the most simple and appropriate. When they were young, I had a misconception that my brother did not know what he wanted, while my sister was very good at making choices.
It was only when my sister was in her twenties and complained to me about a past incident that I realized the misunderstanding was big.
Once, the family went to Hong Kong to play, the brother in elementary school and kindergarten sister, the return trip can go to Toys R Us each pick a toy. My sister picked a small blackboard that you can buy anywhere for less than a hundred dollars at the beginning. My brother kept picking and changing from the moment he walked in the door, and finally picked out an $800 Batman. On the way to the checkout, he saw a limited edition Batman that cost $4,000 and changed it again: “I want this one!” His mom finally got mad, thinking he had no opinion and would only choose the most expensive one, and forbade him to buy it. It was only when I intervened and put in a good word for my son that both siblings went home happy with the toy they had chosen.
More than 20 years later, my sister still holds a grudge over this incident. She said she regretted her choice, but we praised her for her determination and scolded her brother for his performance, so she didn’t dare to change. But she envied her brother, who was so insistent on wanting it every time, despite all the crying and fussing, and got what he wanted in the end.
As my daughter said, my son is to choose the best and strive for it. Since he was young, the girls he liked were the prettiest in the school. I also helped him chase girls in high school, and although it didn’t work out, he didn’t take it personally, at least he tried.
After graduating from college, he wanted to study film abroad. He had never made a film and was not a graduate of a related department, but he applied to the top ten best schools in the U.S. for film studies. My friends in the film industry laughed at him, and I advised him to choose a school that matched his level. He said, “Dad, it costs so much money to study abroad, if I can’t study at the best, I can just get my diploma at home.” Later, he was accepted to Columbia University and received the Golden Spike Award for his graduation work back home.
That’s how he was, wanting the best all the way, trying to get it. Other parents might have scolded him for being overly ambitious and impractical. But why would you want to block his imagination of the future? Why not let him go and figure it out when he fails, as long as he is willing to take the consequences and be responsible for his choices?
The daughter who doesn’t dare to ask for it says, “I want to take a break from school!”
Growing up warm and considerate, making decisive choices, her sister, whose life seemed to be going smoothly, faced a great deal of career confusion in high school. At the end of the first semester of her senior year, she told us, “I want to take a break from school!”
Growing up in our family, she knew that there were many possibilities in life; however, the value of “only the top three volunteers are schools” permeated the star high school she attended. She didn’t get into the top three that year, and this frustration made her lose confidence in herself and doubt her studies.
My daughter offered to take a break from school and I asked her to give me half a day to think about it. My wife and I went for a walk, and after half a day we agreed, but with two conditions: first, she had to plan her own study and life after the break; second, she had to finish her freshman year of high school before taking a break.
She spent the entire second semester of her senior year preparing for her future suspension. After the break, she planned to listen to “English in the Air” every morning at 7:30 a.m., and then started her day with studying, creative writing, reading books to strengthen her Chinese language skills, and finding courses to reinforce her interest in astronomy. She had a memorial book full of her classmates’ blessings at home, and she announced to the world that she was going to take a break from school and break her own back, with great determination.
The day before the suspension procedure, she wrote a letter to me, saying that her five months were enough, and that she was actually in a mood because she couldn’t pass her high school exams because they were bad; now that she had figured it out, she decided to finish high school and study design in college. After she figured it out and knew what studying high school was all about, she was happier and more willing, and she chose to finish high school and then go to college.
I’m very ordinary, and if my child was well behaved, good, and had good luck, I would be very happy, like any parent. But most of the time, your child may be ordinary, not outstanding academically, and not particularly good. I’m just very aware that life is supposed to have twists and turns like that.
I’ve studied biology, been a biology teacher, given up a publicly funded PhD in the US to return to write, written novels and essays, done movies and TV, and every time I’ve made a life change, it hasn’t made me any less scared. I only knew that being a teacher did not satisfy me, I only knew that I did not like the life of a scientist in America, but what did I like? I didn’t know exactly, but when I vaguely knew that this seemed to be what I wanted, I went after it.
People who grow up in such a mood will be careful when they become fathers, not easily extinguishing their children’s ideas and not easily telling them what to do.
I am not much of a wise father, knowing the future path of my child. I just truly believe that adults make so many wrong choices in their lifetime that they really don’t have the comparative wisdom to know which choice is really the “right” choice. And it doesn’t matter if the choice is right or wrong. Who are you? What kind of life do you want? All will determine the choice you make.
Even if you make the wrong choice, your life will not be ruined because of it. My son once asked me, “Would you be disappointed if I went to work as a photographer in a wedding store later?” I said no, and then said, “What’s wrong if you tell me that I finally understand that I’m on the wrong path, or that there’s no path at all for film, and you support yourself as a wedding photographer?” He said, “That wouldn’t even require going to America for that long to study.”
I told him, “That is a very precious and luxurious period of your life, and I am happy that dad can help you do it. I studied biology in college for four years, worked in medical school for two years, went to the U.S. at public expense to study and then gave up, didn’t I waste ten years? The movies and TV I made later may seem unrelated to these experiences, but I am indeed different from others because of them.
Why am I so comfortable letting my children make choices? Because I’ve seen clearly that every part of life has meaning, whether it’s failure or taking the wrong path, in the end it makes you the person you are today.
When my children were young I rarely said to them, “I’ll teach you.”
Just accompany him when he makes a choice to see, what kind of person are you? What are the strengths? What is a good fit? Find out what direction he fits from his personality, he will be more confident, and people who are confident are less likely to make bad decisions.
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