The self-confidence vs disappointment debate continued

Hi guys, I thought I'd do a quick follow up to my last piece on self-confidence. I've had my audition today and it wasn't perfect, but I think it was okay-ish. I was actually more nervous than I thought when I stepped into the room - my French and Italian were both totally flawless but I panicked a little during the German part and stumbled through the lines. That was frustrating of course - because I knew German was my weakest of the three languages and I had worked so freaking hard on my German but it still is far from perfect. Ironically, I had barely put in any effort into my Italian yet it flowed so smoothly and confidently because I have such a natural affinity for Latin-based languages.

I struggled with the German part of my audition today, yikes. 

Am I disappointed that it didn't go perfectly? Yes I am, but I am able to deal with my disappointment. In any case, I would be more disappointed if I knew I didn't get the part, after all, the whole point about an audition is just to show the casting director that you're good enough for the part - that you're someone they can work with, that you're the right person for the part. Nobody is looking for the finished product at this stage, so hopefully I would have demonstrated enough at the casting to achieve just that. But let's say they pick someone else - would I be disappointed? Of course I would be, but again, I have been here before: I've been able to deal with my disappointment, pick myself up and moved on with my life with an almost business-like efficiency.

In hindsight, I think my parents had problems dealing with me as a child when I was disappointed. I was incredibly ambitious and set myself goals that I often couldn't attain: well, what's so wrong with that? If I had managed to achieve everything I had set out to do, then clearly I wasn't aiming high enough and wasn't ambitious enough! But I think the problem was my emotional outbursts: I often cried whenever I didn't achieve my goals and if I didn't cry, I would mope around and sulk. Just to be clear, I'm talking about the period when I was in primary school, so from the age of about 6 to 12. My parents just didn't know what to do with me when I was crying: I guess they liked being in control of me, so to be faced with one aspect of my emotions they had no control over, well - it totally took them out of their comfort one and confused the heck out of them especially since my two older sisters were a lot more stoic, quite unlike me!

It takes a lot of self-esteem to handle disappointment in life.

Oh my parents were painfully stereotypical Asian/Chinese parents: they wanted complete control over their children. They wanted to bark orders like, "go study now" and for their children to simply do as they are told. Children were to be seen, not heard. I swear I have this memory of me crying when a friend had died and my mother staring at me in confusion saying a bunch of really awkward things like, "stop crying, don't waste time crying. It is just not natural to cry like that. She die already you cry for what?" And clearly, she was at a complete loss at how to comfort a crying child, even if that child was her own - she had absolutely no idea what to say at all. But then again, I don't suppose my grandmother ever comforted her when she cried as a child, so this was an aspect of parenting that she never experienced herself; hence that was always her excuse for her brand of Asian parenting.

Here's the crux of the problem: it's that damn generation gap once again. Despite the fact that I have such stereotypically Chinese parents, my emotional needs as so incredibly western. I'm the ultimate banana: yellow on the outside, totally white on the inside. Chinese parents don't do hugs, they don't say 'I love you', they don't know how to comfort their kids when they are crying - instead, they bottle up their emotions, they value a certain kind of stoicism where you present a brave front to the world even though you may be having the worst day of your life. They think that only white parents would hug and kiss their kids, that only white parents would praise their kids and say things like 'I love you'. Heck, I don't think I have even heard my parents use that phrase with each other, never mind with their children. Of course, these are just stereotypes at the end of the day, but as the saying goes, there's no smoke without fire and I got the extreme end of Asian parenting. I may have had Asian parents but I was certainly not prepared to be an stoic, obedient Asian child for them. (As fate would have it, years later I found out that I am Eurasian after all.)

That's me: Yellow on the outside, white on the inside.

It is perhaps too easy for me to look back as an adult (with 2020 hindsight) to say, oh I should have turned to my peers to fulfill my emotional needs and simply got along a lot better with my parents by giving them what they wanted. But that is really a big responsibility to place on the shoulders of a young child who doesn't quite understand why his parents are so obviously doing everything to ignore the fact that he has emotional needs. For most who experienced what I did, we simply found a way to deal with our emotions and got in with life, but I would like to point you to the case of Ouyang Xiangyu, the Singaporean scholar who tried to murder her colleagues in her lab at Stanford University. Is she a cold blooded murderer or can she plead insanity? What went so wrong with her?

This act of attempted murder by Ouyang may have been a desperate cry for help as she was under a lot of stress at Stanford University, but I have a different theory. I am guessing that she probably has very stereotypically Chinese parents (much like me) and was taught from a young age to bottle up her feelings. So even if she was stressed and depressed, she didn't confide in anyone and simply allowed her emotions to fester inside her whilst maintaining a stoic front to the world. Well, when her stress built up to a point where she could no longer contain it, it had to come out one way or another and in Ouyang's case, it led to her trying to kill those around her. She is now awaiting trial in America and her future is decidedly bleak as she faces time in jail. One only wonders how a meek Singaporean scientist like her would survive in a tough American jail full of hardened criminals like drug dealers and gangsters. Honestly, I feel very sorry for her. I say, it is better to cry once in a while and let your feelings out rather than to end up like Ouyang.

Do you bottle up your feelings?

There is a fine balance to be struck of course: was I an emotionally needy kid? You bet I was - mind you, I still want to talk about my feelings all the time today! But then again, was that such a bad thing? Probably not, since I was at least letting my feelings out rather than bottling them up and letting them fester (the way Ouyang did). Could I have dealt with my feelings in a more rational, calm manner without screaming, shouting and crying? Oh yes, guilty as charged and I am learning as I grow older (and hopefully, wiser). I find writing very cathartic, it is like a form of therapy for me: instead of having all these random thoughts bouncing around in my head, I am able to organize them neatly into a blog piece in a way that makes a lot more sense. Not only does it help me figure out what I am actually thinking, I am also able to get feedback from some of my very dear and very wise readers who give me invaluable emotional support. I do enjoy this blogging process very much and it's a lot more dignified than crying - but it achieves the same goal: I am letting my feelings out rather than bottling them up.

In Ouyang's case, perhaps if she had a more healthy approach towards handling her feelings from a young age could have prevented what happened. She would have been able to handle stress and disappointment a lot better than the way she did. My parents' approach of staying away from challenges that may result in disappointment is also plain wrong, because following that path would still result in long term disappointment when you spend your life too afraid to take any risks. So yes, there is definitely a need for a western style approach of taking care of our emotional needs: I'm not just talking about hugs and kisses here, but about being there for each other when someone badly needs that kind of emotional support. I am very lucky in my life to have been able to identify people along the way who are sensitive and caring, who have been there for me when my parents were totally emotionally autistic towards me. I am deeply grateful to my sisters and a few family friends when I was younger, along with a few really great people in my JC who were there for me when I needed them the most. In my adult life, I have learnt to identify people who have that emotional intelligence to handle my feelings and I now have a very healthy support network of caring, sensitive and intelligent people I can turn to whenever my feelings need taking care of, such as when I experience disappointment. And of course, in turn, I also do my very best to support them as much as they support me - let's share the love.

I have met so many incredibly kind people along the way.

So yes, it was a long journey: I have had plenty of disappointments over the years and I have learnt how to deal with them a lot better over the years. Say I don't get the part that I auditioned for today: what I would do is simply look back upon my track record and remind myself that even though I failed to impress the casting director this time, I have still achieved so much as an actor to be proud of and the right thing to do at this stage would be to analyse any mistakes I may have made at the audition, so as I may learn from them and not make the same mistakes in the future. For example, I tried to improvise in French, Italian and German: my French and Italian were good enough for me to use in improvisation exercises as an actor, but trying to do so in German was a mistake and I had to switch to plan B, which was to regurgitate a German piece that I had memorized earlier. A far less spontaneous performance, but at least one which was safer given that my German was just not that great despite having done German TV!  I have learnt how to be very pragmatic and constructive when dealing with disappointing situations as an adult - it is just a shame I had to figure all this out without any help from my parents who are utterly hopeless at saying anything appropriate or tactful to anyone at the best of times. It is what it is and I just have to move on with my life.

But still, it is ever so nice to hear people say comforting words to you when you're down: yes I may be a strong and intelligent person today, but I am also human and I have feelings too. It is wonderful when my friends make the effort to let me know that they care, they understand and they are concerned about my feelings. That's why I always try to make an effort to say something nice to my friends when I know they are down, disappointed or just having a bad day: because I know the power of my words to make them feel just a little bit better if I show them that I care. And that is why it is still important to speak to your friends like that, or at least in our digital age, check up on their Facebook status updates and express concern, love and empathy. I just saw that one of my regular readers had a tumour removed today and I had a long Facebook exchange with her - there's really nothing I can do when I am not even in the same country, but I do hope that in showing her that I do care about her, I have made her day just that little bit better. So that's the message I will leave you with for now: don't just assume that your friends and family are smart enough to sort out their emotional issues, always take the initiative to speak up and offer your love. Trust me, you will make them feel so much better. I have another long story to tell you, but I'll save it for another time. Many thanks for reading.