The elephant in the room that I can't ignore

Hi there guys, I have a reputation on my blog for tackling the elephant in the room that few people dare to talk about and thus I have offended a lot of people over the years in daring to do just that - well, hold on tight folks as this is going to be one of those offensive and controversial posts. I'm going to discuss how I struggle with the fact that my parents are uneducated whilst let's just say I'm quite the opposite having done well for myself. In September this year, I started a new job for a South American asset manager and I was brought in as the technical expert from London - the fact is a lot of the investment products that are used in Latin America are structured in Europe and since I have years of experience working with these product providers in Europe, I am in a good position to guide my Latin American colleagues and clients through the complex world of investment products. It isn't just my technical knowledge that I am using in this process, I also know a lot of people in the business so I am also making sure that my company and clients work with the right people in Europe. Thus whilst I am speaking primarily in Spanish with my team and clients in Latin America, I also use German and French when dealing with some of the product providers in Europe as well. It is hard enough to do what I do only in English, but when you add the language component to it, it becomes infinitely harder. But I do enjoy the challenge of course, I did a Zoom call last week with a client in France with my boss in Peru, I switched seemlessly between French and Spanish, whilst carefully avoiding my mother tongue English and thus impressing the both of them.

This is when I'd like to quote Ginger Rogers, "you should try doing it backwards, in heels." You see, she was famous for her elaborate dance routines with Fred Astaire in the 1930s and 1940s - as dance partners, she was expected to mirror everything that Astaire had choreographed but she was doing it backwards and in heels, making it infinitely harder for her and it is evident that what was demanded of her was off the scale in terms of difficulty. Hence that's the phrase that most people use when they are doing something that's far harder than what most people perceive. When my friends from within the industry find out what I am doing in this job, they are quite shocked as they realize the magnitude of the challenges I face. Latin American Spanish is a whole different level of pain! Thus if you speak English then you can communicate with people from all over the English speaking world and even if the accents are different you will understand each other. I am currently watching an Australian TV programme and I don't need subtitles. But with Latin American Spanish, holy crap the amount of regional variations is more similar to the way we have different dialects in Chinese. So in Mandarin the word for eat is 吃 pronounced 'chī' but in Cantonese it is 'sek' and in Hokkien it is 'jiat'; the word for the day is "wall" in Spanish and my goodness, for a basic concept like a wall, you have four words: pared, barrera, muro and tapia but just to confuse me even further, they used the term 'fondo' instead of any of the four words we usually use for walls as they were referring to the wall as a background rather than a structure holding up the ceiling and I was left wondering, is there a fifth word for 'wall' that they use in Ecuador? That's the kind of challenge I face daily.  

Here's another major factor in the equation: I'm already 46 years old. I'm not young, many people at my age would already be thinking about retiring within the next 15 years or so. That's why the concept of having to do more instead of less at this age is probably rather unusual - there is that myth that older people like me cannot learn new things. We're quite used to looking at bright young people being ready to learn at university or undergoing training in their first job in their 20s, but when it comes to further training for older people, it is a lot harder because we're battling challenges on two fronts. Firstly there's the bad attitude - older people are resistant to change, they feel embarrassed when being made to feel incompetent in whichever skill they are made to learn. Take learning a new language for example, a younger student doesn't mind or care so much if s/he is struggling on in a foreign language like a total beginner but an older adult might feel a lot more self-conscious about trying to order a meal in Spanish whilst struggling on with the basics of the language. Then there's a real problem with technology - even if you want to work as a delivery driver today, you have to learn how to pick up orders through an app on your mobile phone and if you are very old, you never grew up with that kind of technology so you would have to learn how to operate a smart phone to do that job. Whilst younger people would probably figure out how to use a new app in under a minute, a lot of older folks are totally useless when it comes to using modern technology. Hence it is a combination of those factors that makes it rare for an older person like me to find myself in this kind of position, having to adapt to a new environment and learn so much in a short time when most older people simply refuse to put themselves through that anymore, as some older people lack the confidence to learn anything new. 

Thus the issue I have with my family, especially my parents, is that they have absolutely no idea just how hard my job is. I've been tasked with developing a business development strategy for El Salvador, a country that I have never set foot in and I have to establish my credibility with the locals there. No, I have never been there but I speak Spansh fluently and I know everything there is to know about your country. Being an outsider and a non-Latino, I often have to go above and beyond what is expected of Latinos who want to do business in Latin America to prove my Latino credentials. But the problem is that my parents have absolutely no idea what I do for a living, never mind try to understand some of the harder challenges I am facing whilst trying to prove myself as they use very rudimentary methods to judge if my work is hard - so for example, I told them that my working hours are flexible and given that I am six hours ahead of my head office in Peru, I have very quite mornings where I have a slow and lazy start. My colleagues are considerate enough not to expect me to jump on Zoom calls or participate in meetings in the evenings, so it's really the afternoon when our working days overlap and it can be quite busy from the period of 2:30 pm to 6 pm but otherwise, that's like me working half day. So based on that information, they think my job is "easy" based on the fact that I don't work stupidly long hours like most people in Singapore. However, trying to judge how difficult my job is purely based on my working hours is just wrong on so many levels - a delivery driver who is paid peanuts can be working crazy long hours just to earn enough money to pay the bills, but is his job "harder" than mine by that token? His job is definitely more horrible than mine but harder? And can that delivery driver do my job? No, of course not; very few people have my kind of technical knowledge. 

But before I get too self-indulgent, please let me talk about this guy Martin who showed up at my gymnastics club recently. It was unreal how talented he was, it was his very first gymnastics lesson and I swear. All we had to do was to show him how to do a new trick and it would take him like three or four attempts to figure it out and then he'd be like, "I did it, what next?" I swear, most normal people would take at least several months at least to learn what he achieved in two hours. It was clear that for someone like Martin, he was naturally talented at gymnastics thus he was able to pick it those new skills effortlessly. So it wasn't a question of "is a forward hip circle a difficult skill?" I wouldn't describe it as a simple skill as your timing has to be just right - there is little margin for error on that skill but for someone like Martin, he was able to figure it out super quickly thus for him, no, it wasn't a difficult skill whilst for other beginners, they probably walked away thinking, "that skill would take me months, if not years to learn!" I don't even think Martin was even aware of the unfair advantage that his talent afforded him during that gymnastics lesson, but sometimes life just isn't fair like that. Thus in this case, even if the skill was hard, Martin didn't find it difficult at all whereas most other gymnastics would beg to differ. So with that in mind, is what I am doing at work really that difficult for me or am I picking up Spanish the same way Martin is picking up new skills in the gym with very little effort? Well, let's put it this way: if I didn't think I could pull this off then I wouldn't have accepted this job in the first place; but then again, I'm not exactly finding it easy either and with Martin, I was soon getting him to try some more advanced skills that he found difficult. I found the limits of his ability. 

There's one thing I always do when my gymnasts have a good session: I'd encourage them to take a video and then share it on social media, so their friends can see what they've achieved. Let's say Martin shows his mates a video of him doing a back somersault and his friends would ask him, "so how long did it take you to learn that trick? Ten minutes? That fast? Oh then we should all try that as well if it is that easy." The fact that Martin learnt that skill in ten minutes doesn't mean that a back somersault is so easy that anyone can learn that skill in just ten minutes, rather it is a reflection on just how incredibly talented Martin is and it does frustrate me when people get that perspective wrong because in this case, you are depriving Martin of the credit he deserves by incorrectly perceiving that skill as 'easy' when it is not, far from it. Thus whilst as a gymnastics coach, I acknowledge the huge role that Martin's talent has played in process, nonetheless, I still would like to give him plenty of credit and many people just take for granted that oh that's Alex, he speaks many languages, he's a linguist so of course he can work in a Spanish-speaking work environment. Whilst I have the ability and talent to do that, it still doesn't mean I find it easy to operate at this level in Spanish. There's a huge difference between basic conversational Spanish that allows you to order a meal at a restaurant or buy a ticket at a train station and discussing a complex business strategy with my team entirely in Spanish. When you add in the fact that my Spanish is entirely self-taught, then it makes my achievement even more remarkable and my colleagues do realize that.

But I'm left in this situation with my family who just shrug their shoulders and think, yeah that's just what Alex does, he likes learning languages and it's easy for him - the same way they would look at a gymnast like Martin and just shrug their shoulders and say, yeah he's very talented, that's all really easy when you have that natural talent. I wonder if this is just some kind of coping mechanism by people who haven't achieved much - they simply dismiss the achievements of others by claiming that all these achievements were a result of some unfair advantage achieved through the genetic lottery and so these successful people are just 'lucky' that they can achieve all these amazing feats with ease and therefore we shouldn't give them any credit for simply being lucky. Now that's a really simplistic way of viewing a very complex situation - whilst it is clear that I have a gift for picking up languages but it doesn't just happen. I'm not picking it up passively by watching the news in Spanish and then magically absorbing all the content automatically - there is an insane amount of hard work that I put into learning Spanish on my own. Would someone who isn't as gifted in foreign languages be able to learn Spanish the way I do without a teacher? Probably, but it would take them much longer to achieve what I have done in a short period of time. Likewise, I think most gymnasts can probably achieve the same skills that Martin the super talented gymnast has mastered - it would just take them two years instead of two hours. Yes the bottom line is that life can be incredibly unfair and that's why some people react to the inherent unfair nature of life by dismissing the achievements of others by claiming "oh it's all too easy for them, they have the natural talent for it." But it sucks to be at the receiving end of that from my own family who have not even noticed what I have achieved in my job. 

I'm left with no solutions with this frustrating situation with my family, what I have done instead is to speak to my friends from within the industry like JP - my friend JP runs his own company within the financial services industry and his company does business all over the world including in Africa, Asia and South America. Thus JP completely understands the kind of challenges that I am going through and the kind of conversations I have with him are completely different from the ones I would have with my family as we work in the same industry. The logical conclusion would be that I should really only talk to people like JP about work if I am after empathy, encourage or validation because he understands what I am going through whilst my family doesn't. I'd like to talk about my old friend 'Tan' - I got to know him back when we were in secondary school and like me, he also has very working class parents who were uneducated. Like JP, Tan is a business owner today and stunningly successful in his chosen field so as you can see, Tan and I do share a lot in common. So how does Tan relate to his completely uneducated working class parents? Well, they're happy enough that he is rich even if they have no idea what the hell he does for a living - Tan doesn't even try to explain it to them, it's way too completely for uneducated elderly folks to understand and both parties are happy to leave it at that. Tan is grateful for the way his parents worked hard to put him through school and university so that he could have all the opportunities they never had. Would Tan's uneducated parents say stupid ignorant crap that annoys him? Yes, of course they do, but I did speak to him about how he copes with this challenge and Tan pointed out to me that he has found a way to rationalize it. 

He explained, "Alex, we are both very educated, intelligent people so whatever we do has got to make sense to us, there has got to be a reason, a logic. So when dealing with our uneducated parents who say stupid, ignorant things, we cannot default to being Chinese and pretend that everything they say is somehow wise and correct when clearly, it is not. The way I deal with it is by being thankful that I didn't end up like that: you and I have the same kind of poor, Singaporean-Chinese, very working class background but we both attained social mobility againt the odds because we turned out to be a lot more intelligent than our parents. It's just the IQ lottery, we got lucky and I don't take that for granted because I have a brother who wasn't that lucky and you will be amazed how similar he is to my parents today in so many aspects. Thus I channel any frustration when my parents say stupid things to pure gratitude that I didn't turn out like them or my brother. Many people in our culture would perceive that 'gratitude' to filial piety, like I'm such a good son who is forever grateful to my parents for the way they had brought me up - it's not the same but you know the difference, I have the right to reconcile that in my head on my own terms, not the terms as dictated by some age-old Chinese cultural tradition. We don't get to choose our parents: they could be ignorant, uneducated, stubborn, unreasonable and often just a fucking pain to deal with. I don't agree with the way a lot of Chinese children feel the need to put them on a pedestal and ignore their faults - we're lucky in that our intellect gives us a way to cope with this kind of situation on our own terms, I can't stress that enough: on our own terms. Fuck whatever the Chinese concept of filial piety is, fuck that shit; this is my family, my challenges, my problems and thus I am finding my solutions on my own terms. It's not perfect, but that's how I cope." 

It's not like I'm looking for any kind of validation from my parents - they have no concept of what I do for a living anyway so even if they forced themselves to say something nice like, "we're proud of what you have achieved", I would reply, "how can you be proud of what I have achieved when you have no idea what I have achieved?" No, instead I speak to friends like JP and Tan with whom I can have a more meaningful conversation about my career. It does feel sad though that this is the state of my relationship with my parents; on one of my trips back to Singapore, I witnessed how my father spoke to one of his friends and I swear it was bizarre watching two older, working class people have that conversation and I didn't say a word, I couldn't participate without being disrespectful as the only thought in my head was, "I'm shocked at how stupid the two of you are, this is what happens when two uneducated people talk to each other." You know the way adults talk to very young children about 3 or 4 years old? They use very simple words, repeat themselves to make sure the child understands and I felt like the only way I could possibly join in that conversation was if I spoke the same way. I do wonder if Tan indulges his parents the same way by indulging them in their ignorane and stupidity, suspending any kind of judgment in the process in order to facilitate some kind of communication? Or does he simply say, "I'm educated, you're not and I'm here to save you from your own stupidty. There's a pandemic and you don't even know how to take care of yourself so it's time for me to be the adult in this relationship." Or is there a compromise somewhere between those two extremes then? Have you ever been in this type of situation and how would you cope? 

So there you go, that's it from me on this topic. It's so hard to talk to other people about this topic unless you are very close friends, such as in the case of Tan. Most people would avoid the topic out of either embarrassment (as you can't possibly be proud of your parents being uneducated) or respect for their parents because they want to spare their parents of any possible embarrassment associated with being so uneducated. There might be other instances where children simply go into denial about the topic by finding other older folks who are even more uneducated to try to assure themselves that things are still okay, "whilst my parents are not graduates, they're not completely illiterate and they're not completely hopeless. I've also met older folks who are even more stupid and out of touch with the modern world." Hence this topic just gets swept under the carpet time and time again as nobody wants to talk about it. So where does this leave us? I leave that question to you, please let me know your thoughts: are you more educated than your parents? How do you deal with the transition from being a child when your parents knew more than you to the point as an adult, when you realize that you're far more intelligent, educated and experienced in dealing with the modern world than your parents? Why do Asian people in particular default to offering the older generation respect whether or not they deserve it or not? Is this purely a matter of being sensitive and tactful when it comes to older people who feel bewildered in the modern world run by technology that they are completely unfamiliar with? Please leave a comment below and many thanks for reading.