Just two simple words: 加油 "Jiayou"

Hi guys, please allow me to get something off my chest. I had a Skype conversation with my family over the weekend and I told them about some of the frustrating challenges I am facing at work - it is never easy trying to start a new company and whilst we have a great product, bringing it to market, getting people to buy it is always going to be a challenge. My mother sat in on the Skype conversation and listened; as usual, well, she didn't say much or offer a word of encouragement. It's like she doesn't know what encouragement is and I've come to expect nothing less from her: I know what my late grandmother was like and my mother definitely never received a word of encouragement from my grandmother, like ever. After hearing what I had to say, she simply said, "keep us updated, let us know how you get along with it, okay?" I suppose that was as good as it was going to get from her - a vague sign of interest.

"Jiayou!" 

I do know that she tried her best encouraging my nephew when it came to his PSLE last year and let's just say, he didn't get the results he wanted and he was totally devastated. My guess is that he had set himself an unrealistic target and had set himself up for failure - it seemed inevitable but with everyone encouraging him to study hard and try his best, my mother didn't quite know how to deal with the situation. As much as she wanted him to do well in his PSLE, it broke her heart to see how disappointed and upset her grandson was when he got his PSLE results. My mother doesn't know how to deal with a crying child - she doesn't do 'sayang-sayang' because she never got any kind of 'sayang-sayang' herself as a child. In fact, she told me many times that only white people did that kind of 'sayang-sayang' and it was not in our Asian culture to do 'sayang-sayang' (even if we do have a word in Malay for it).

What is the purpose of 'sayang-sayang' anyway? Being nice to a crying child, comforting someone who is upset, frustrated or disappointed is a skill - you can't change anything, you can't solve the problem that is troubling the person in the first place, but I do believe that kind words can go a long way to make one feel a lot better. In my case, there's nothing my family can do to help me with the challenges I am facing. I tried explaining my business model (in English, Hokkien and Mandarin) to my parents and they just don't get it at all - well, they're retired primary school teachers who know their way around a PSLE syllabus, but know very little about the world of business. I don't expect them to understand what I do, but it would be nice for them to say something encouraging. My older sister however, has been extremely encouraging and she knows exactly what to say to me: but there was one word that she used that resonated with me: 加油 "jiayou". (That's as Chinese as you can get, so we do have that concept in our culture.)

Do you know how to comfort someone in distress?

Why is 加油 "jiayou" so apt in this case? Well, I guess it is because of my gymnastics background - my sister has been to many competitions to watch me, where she has witnessed other gymnasts shouting 加油 to their team mates when they are competing. 加油 literally means 'add oil' - it doesn't mean anything when you try to understand the individual words, but it is a battle cry to show your support for the person facing the challenge. In Korean, the equivalent is 'fighting' (yes, a loanword from English), though that often comes out as 'hwaiting' as Koreans don't know how to pronounce the 'F' sound. In French, the equivalent is 'allez' (pronounced 'ah-lay') whilst in Russian it is Давай (pronounced 'da-vai'): allez actually means 'you go' whilst Давай literally means 'come' but they are used the same way as '加油' in this context. Go to an international gymnastics competition and you will hear people shout: jiayo, hwaiting, allez and davai a lot as people encourage their favourite gymnasts.

It doesn't matter whether I am at a gymnastics competition or whether I am struggling to get a new business off the ground - I know my wonderful sister is there for me, shouting 加油 to encourage me, to let me know that she is there for me. At the end of the day, I still have to work my butt off to solve the problems I am facing at work, I actually now know what I have to do to get there - but as humans, most of us are culturally conditioned to respond positively to encouragement and by the same token, we also respond negatively to indifference and/or scorn. I suppose my mother's somewhat lukewarm interest falls somewhere between the two, but is it so difficult just to use the words 'jiayou' even if it can come across as a little cliche at times? My mother was able to help my nephew with his PSLE exams last year - but as he grows older (he's now in secondary school and is so much taller now, how time flies, goodness me), I hope my mother will realize the power of those two little words '加油' - sometimes encouragement is all we can offer when we can't do anything else to help, but let's not underestimate how important encouragement is.

Why do words matter so much?

So what do you think? Do you believe in the power of words, the power of encouragement? Are words over rated, do you think that talk is cheap? Do let me know what you think, leave a comment below. Many thanks for reading.