Chua's story: why did he give up his dreams?

Hi guys. Sometimes during the discussions in the comments section of my blog, I do start telling stories that I think deserve to become a blog post and so here's one of them. In this post, I'm going to be sharing with you the story of my former classmate from VJC - let's call him Chua (not his real name) and I think his case study is quite interesting. It is all about settling and let's begin way back in the period 1993 and 1994. Chua and I used to get the same bus to school and back - one of the buses that I used was the 76 and I would often run into Chua on the bus. We were both so sleep deprived then that we often fell asleep mid-conversation and when one or both of us finally woke up, we would pick up right where we had left off. So over a period of nearly two years, we got to know each other quite well this way. One of the things I remember clearly from those conversations on the bus was Chua's many ideas for business - he would read about something being trendy in Germany, Canada or South Korea, then realized hey nobody is doing this yet in Singapore, if I could franchise it or copy the idea, then I could be the first in Singapore. Based on that, I had always thought that Chua would become a successful businessman when he got to his 40s, like he would have a chain of stores across Singapore selling the trendiest beauty products or health supplements imported from South Korea and Japan but no, that was not how things turned out at all so allow me to share his story to explain one aspect of Singaporean culture.

After Chua graduated from NUS, he started working in IT but after several years, many parts of his company's operations were outsourced to India where the work could be done a lot cheaper by highly skilled Indian experts who were paid a lot less than their counterparts in Singapore. So despite being very good at his job, the inevitable happened - Chua was made redundant. At this point, he had a redundancy package and he contemplated doing an MBA to make his switch from IT into a new path that would lead him to start his own business. Except there was a huge problem - by this point, Chua already had a girlfriend and both sets of parents had been putting a lot of pressure on them to settle down and have children as they were already in their 30s. Chua did assure them, of course that has been the plan all along but I can have a career, I can run a business and have a family too. Loads of people do that, it is not something that unusual. However, everyone in his family were against the idea: starting a business is a risky venture, you must work long hours to run your business and then you wouldn't have time to go home to your wife and literally "make babies" - why don't you choose a job that will allow you to put family life first, you can then have loads of children, knowing that you will have a regular salary and your workload will allow you to have plenty to spare time to be a good father? So they all ganged up on him - Chua's parents, Chua's girlfriend and her parents' all put a lot of pressure on him to give up his dream of running his own business and become a teacher. So what did Chua do under such circumstances? He eventually crumbled under their pressure - he entered the teaching profession, got married and is now a father of two children. He is now teaching at one of the secondary schools near where he lives. His parents, his parents in law and his wife are all happy but I know that there's a part of Chua that is thinking, "wait a minute this wasn't what I wanted, what about my dreams?" 

So Chua's story illustrates how many traditional Asian families prioritize having children ahead of any other kind of ambition or goals that one may have, such as Chua's desire to run his own business. This story raises two questions: firstly, why didn't Chua's then girlfriend (now wife) take his side and encourage him to follow his dreams? Why did she gang up against him to quash his dreams in order to get him to start a family with her? Did she not care about his happiness or feelings? And the second question is this: if that was the way she treated him, why didn't he just say, "I expect my wife to be a lot more supportive and understanding, but you're conspiring against me? I can't do this anymore, it's over." I have actually met Chua's wife once, let's just call her Mrs Chua. She seems like a nice enough person, she is younger than Chua and came across as your average Chinese-Singaporean lady. I still don't understand why she was so risk averse, why she objected to the idea of Chua started his own business as if it would be so detrimental to the possibility of her having children. Did she worry that he would be working such long hours he would neglect her and not have the desire to start a family if he was so focused on his work? She wasn't a particularly high achiever either, she had a fairly ordinary, down to earth job in administration - thus whilst she didn't have a lot of responsibilities at work, she also had a luxury of not having too much stress either. If that's what she wanted for herself, that is fine but why did she want the same for her husband? Did she worry that if she had supported Chua to pursue his dreams that somehow he would have no time left for her or that she would slip to the second most important thing in his life after his business? Perhaps I'm too cynical about her intentions, but is this a manifestation of her own insecurity: she wants to be the most important thing in his life and so if he had a very mundane job as a teacher - then she would always be the center of his attention? 

After all, Mrs Chua doesn't have much control in her work - in her office, her boss would give her work to do, she would have to take instructions and even when she wants to go on her lunch break, she can't  simply go when she is hungry or feels like it, she can only go when it is the official lunch hour and she has to be back at her desk on time. In her family life, she is constantly under pressure from her parents to have children as soon as possible - it doesn't help that she has an older sister who has already had two children and she is thus expected to follow suit. Is this a desperate attempt on her part to find one area of her life where she can actually have some control? Does she get a sense of satisfaction knowing that she has that much influence over her husband - is this some kind of sick experiment on her part just to see how much control she has over her husband, to test how far he would go to please her? She may not get to decide when she gets to go for lunch, but at least this is one area of her life she feels she is in total control of. But there's another argument that could be more plausible: she is your typical Singaporean who is programmed (or you could say brainwashed) to follow the rules and do what is expected of her, that includes getting married and having children. Thus it is entirely possible that in guiding Chua away from a more risky path, she genuinely believes that she is doing him a favour, she is helping him fulfill his responsibilities to his family and society by becoming a father first and doing whatever is necessary to create the most conducive environment to facilitate that: it is not some kind of scheme to deliberately manipulate or test her husband, but she is simply doing what she believes is the best for her husband in this case and she genuinely just wants the best for him. Thus in this case, she is a simple, brainwashed Singaporean who is so used to doing what is expected of her but there is no ill will, no malice at all that motivated her when she pressured her husband into giving up his dreams and settle for teaching. Hence she genuinely believes that she is doing the right thing for Chua 

Another big question is this: so how does Chua feel about this situation? Is he happy to become a father and a teacher? If so, then who are we to judge him for that decision - after all, aren't we all allowed to change our minds about what we want to do in life and make new plans? Well I did actually talk to him about it but I am not sure I got an honest answer out of him. After all, when I last met up with Chua, his wife was there and he was hardly going to say anything bad about her in her presence, even if it was to his old friend from VJC. I felt there was definitely an element of self-censorship during that very polite conversation in front of his wife when he was careful with his words. I remember saying, oh I'd love to have some coffee, would you join me? Chua initially said yes why not, coffee sounds great. But then his wife said no it is too late, you shouldn't drink coffee so late in the afternoon and so he then politely declined my offer for coffee. Perhaps I am reading too much into this little incident, but it does go to show that she does exert a lot of influence over his decisions. I wanted to say, if you feel like drinking then just go ahead, you don't need your wife's permission, you're not a child anymore. It's not like I am offering drugs, alcohol or cigarettes, it's just a cup of coffee. But on the other hand, Chua may enjoy the fact that he has a wife who cares about his health and well-being, so this is kind of attention is a form of affection in their relationship. On social media, I am getting a regular stream of content from the Chua household about what a happy family they are and how they enjoy quality family time together. If you simply stumbled upon that content on social media, you'll say, "yeah, they do look like a typical Singaporean family who are happy enough." The only reason why I refuse to accept this version of events is because of those many long bus rides I had shared with Chua when he had told me all about his business dreams and ambitions which have well and truly been quashed by his family. 

The thing about this story that stood out for me was the way Mrs Chua took the side of Chua's parents and her own parents - I would have expected her to stand by Chua and encourage him rather than gang up against him in this manner. What does this tell us about her relationship with Chua? I would have thought (perhaps rather naively) that part of the reason why she loved him enough to want to marry him was because of his quirky character that made him dream about starting his own business as that was what made Chua a special and unique individual. Perhaps this is something I take for granted - when I have any desire to do something no matter how crazy or unusual, I have always had the support of my partner and whilst my family never supported me, they would never go out of their way to try to stop me from doing what I wanted to do. I suppose they would just stand back and observe, knowing that if I had made up my mind, there was really nothing they could do or say to influence my decision. But that is just me - I am so headstrong but Chua isn't like that. I go back to those long conversations I had with him on the bus, he would often turn to me and say, "what do you think? Is that a good idea? Would you say that this would be a successful business model? How can I improve it?" Gosh if it had been the other way around, I would simply be telling him, "Chua, I've got this great idea and it's gonna be brilliant." I wouldn't be seeking his approval the way he tried to get mine, to confirm that he did have a workable plan. You could say that the way Chua is willing to listen to others is a very good trait if you want to set up a new business - after all, it is of course useful to seek help and feedback from others to refine and improve your business plans. But at the same time, this was the very same trait that led to Chua's family talking him out of pursuing his dreams.

But at the end of the day, am I expecting too much when I was hoping for Chua to go through with all of those plans he shared with me on the bus when we were students back in the day? Teenagers are allowed to dream, to make crazy plans about what they want to do as adults, they showed feel free to talk about those ambitions amongst friends without being judged and that was exactly what Chua did with me. I remember this conversation I had on a trip back to Singapore, I went to watch a gymnastics competition and actually managed to catch up with a lot of former gymnasts whom I had not met since the late 1990s. One of them asked me what I did for a living, when he found out that I was in finance  he was very surprised. "I had always just assumed that you would go into journalism based on what I remember of you back in the 1990s." He remembered that I really enjoyed writing, my English was very good and I had even expressed a desire to go into journalism on a few occasions. In fact, writing my blog and reaching so many readers is a way for me to express that desire to write but the one key factor that my friend wasn't aware of was that I saw the struggles of my sister when she went into journalism - it was no fun at all, she was constantly having her articles censored by her editor and in reality she had very little say when it came to what she was allowed to write. Much to her frustration, some of her articles were so heavily edited/censored by her editor that they barely resembled what she had originally written. But of course, I hadn't shared that with my friend from gymnastics, so he didn't see how I had changed my mind about journalism. By the same token, I hadn't kept in touch that closely with Chua since I moved away from Singapore and it was possible that he had encountered some evidence since that has made him change his mind about starting his own business, thus maybe it is unfair to pin the blame entirely on his wife and family for crushing his dreams. 

So there you go, that's Chua's story for you, what do you think? Am I being too harsh on Mrs Chua for pressuring him into teaching? Or was she just one factor in a complex situation? Would you gladly give up your dreams to put family first? Am I just too selfish to expect Chua to put his own happiness first?  Do you think Mrs Chua is afraid to compete with Chua's ambitious business dreams for his attention? Please leave a comment below and many thanks for reading.