The year was 2000 – the year of the dragon. The year my little boy arrived. This time, we were more settled.
We had moved into a lovely bungalow, still rented, but such a wonderful home with the best memories of my little kids growing up. We worked from home – converted two big rooms into office, hired our first full time staff, Sally, Miko and April. Sally & Miko were graphic designers and April was my first ever writer.
The three of them still keep in touch with me…. Miko’s daughter, Monica and my daughter are now best friends and Miko helps her husband run his own f&b, Sally is in insurance & car sales, and April is a yoga instructor now.
That house in SS1 was really our first proper office. We had a store to house all the publications, a fully equipped little office, a large dining table that served as both a receiving area and a place to wrap our magazines in plastic for the distributor. The pantry was the kitchen below where my mom cooked up a storm for us.
It was great not having to travel to work and was such a cosy work environment.
Life was so simple back then. We made many trips to Johor and Singapore during this time, to look for advertisers there, and my mother used to say my little girl missed us a lot during these trips.
She would crawl up the stairs to our bedroom and knock on our door and then climb back slowly and sadly when she knew we were not there.
It used to make my heart sink to know that I was not spending enough time with her but I told myself that I was building a better future for them. When her brother came along, they became great friends, almost inseparable inspite of the fights that siblings inevitably have.
That bond formed to support each other when their parents had to travel so much became a life support system for the three of us, when their parents went separate ways many years later.
The relatives were not helpful though, because they all had to have an Opinion, you see. Their opinions were that their opinions were very important and life defining and some got pretty upset that we were not heeding their aforesaid important opinions.
Here are a few of the choicest opinions.
“Why are they not asking us their opinions on doing all this?” this was from a senior relative who had never run a business.
“Why are they not giving us copies of their magazines”, was another complaint.
“Nirmala is not being a good mother because she is not spending every single second raising her children.
Her children will grow up very distant and aloof and be troubled,” said a homemaker who could not comprehend my choice in my life.
“They have good degrees and they are throwing it all away to do basic business which even an illiterate person can do,” said an air hostess.
Over the years I have learnt one thing. You cannot please everybody. And it is not your job to do so.
You need only answer to one person – yourself. You need to be fair and kind and compassionate to you first and love you most before you can impart this love, care, concern and kindness to everyone else around you.
It sounds really simple, but you will be surprised that so few people actually practice this.
I know I didn’t. I was so busy trying to do everything for everyone – to be the ‘right’ wife, mother, daughter, boss, friend, service provide, socialite – that I did not know who I was .
And I did not know that that was actually a problem because I was just so busy doing. I did not have the time to go within me and figure out what is it that Beatrice wanted, or most importantly who she is.
From birth till death, we live a charade that we think we are supposed to be the protagonist of. But why? and for what ? We are so conditioned to follow that yellow brick road to a hazy reward at the end of it that we never stop to ask what is it we really want for ourselves.
The scarier part is most don’t even know. Society dictates that success is money. But the more money you earn, the more you pay taxes to guys who control the world. You buy a house and pay off a loan three times the value of that house to the banks who own that house until your debts are paid off.
You spend an enormous amount to send your children to universities thinking if you don’t, you haven’t done your best for them. We get trapped in a bubble of ‘doing what we should do’.
Nobody ever questions why. Walk the yellow brick road with me next week to discover where it led us.
The views expressed here are those of the columnist and do not necessarily represent the views of New Sarawak Tribune. Feedback can reach the writer at beatrice@ibrasiagroup.com
