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Singapore, renowned worldwide for the quality and variety of its hawker food, has been facing the problem of its decline for quite some time now. It’s not an easy job being a hawker: long hours, rising stall rentals, and the society’s nouveau mentality to menial labour has made the profession undesirable to the younger generation, who have bought into the dream of the high life. They would much rather be bankers, selling baloney and bubbles, than follow the footsteps of their forebears, earning their keep a few dollars at a time providing stressed masses with God’s gift to weary people: a steaming hot plate of char kuay teow.

The death of the hawking industry would be a huge loss for Singapore. The thought of an overworked population not having access to good cheap food is a scary one, but the loss of hawker food would be a death blow to the already tenuous shroud that is our Singaporean identity.

So when the government announced, after months of gathering industry and public feedback, that it wanted to make the hawking profession “attractive and honourable”, it was expected, but I baulked a little at the choice of words. We’ve always been relatively good at making things “attractive”, but “honourable”, to be frank, is out of the government’s league.

I do not mean it derisively, but honour is not easily bestowed by measures or means. You can fake it, much like the ornate robes worn by university professors at graduation ceremonies to instill a sense of pomp for the day, but real honour is bestowed by the people.

I’ll be blunt and honest here. We are really, really stingy when it comes to according honour. Whether we got to this point because of massive doses of competition, the effects of globalisation, or remnants of a survivor mentality that is still embedded in us, I’ll leave that discussion for keener minds. I think we can all agree that we aren’t a very generous people, particularly when it comes to our own. I’m guilty as charged.

Economically it makes sense to “move up the value chain”, but it is naive to look at value in purely economic terms. People do not climb the next rung of the economy ladder for a myriad of reasons, some by choice and others by circumstance. Dignity and honour should be found at all levels, and in all jobs. Professor Lim Chong Yah’s proposal to address income inequality and Ho Kwon Ping’s call to complete the wage reform in neglected sectors, based on my very, very rudimentary grasp of economics and through the lens of the state media, may come across as radical or extreme, but the spirit of their message is one we need in our stage of societal evolution. I think citizens need to understand that there are associated costs that come with caring. We can expect the cost of consumables to go up as we make livelihoods for lower-income jobs more equitable and sustainable. We need to decide, as a society, if we are willing to pay the cost to realise our ideals. There is no magic bullet, no grandfather who’ll pay for our moral high ground. Eventually we’ll need to pay for it, because we believe we cannot go on exploiting the downtrodden just so we can reap the benefits of a good life at a low price.

But I digress. The wage structure is but part of honour, and has been debated vigourously as of late.

How do we accord honour? How do we bring dignity to jobs that at the lower rungs of this man-made ladder to which we all seem enslaved?

Be nice. That’s a helluva good start.

Smile, and say your thank-you’s. To the cleaners, to the hawkers, to the construction workers. To all the ones whom we pass by; the ones we’ve taken for granted; the ones we’ve derided by telling our children they’ll end up there if they don’t study hard, be nice. Recognise their contributions to our lives, and express a little gratitude.

It’ll go farther than any government programme to instill honour and dignity.

Daniel Goh, this post is for you. I don’t drink alcohol, but for inspirational stories like yours, I just might have to pop by Good Beer and raise a glass. Erm. Mug. Yes I’m new at this.

Caleb lies awake in his room, Faith watching over him while I take a breather from night duty. We’ve just sponged him with tepid water in an attempt to cool the fever. He endures the procedure, though he clearly hates it, muttering soft “I don’t want”s, his voice quivering as he shivers.

I’m barely able to hold myself together at this point, my heart shattering in a thousand pieces, crying out in anguished prayer for the suffering to be taken away from him. My faith flickers in the wind, believing that God knows what He’s doing, even though I do not.

These moments are real. Real in that they strip away the games we play; the facades we navigate as adults in a world we constructed. It is these moments we are left with nothing except a stark, pure, unadulterated look at life and its meaning, where thoughts find their utterance in prayer. Life in its raw form.

This is the real reason why we need children in our lives. Forget the economic argument or talk of lineage and continuance. There is nothing on earth more worthy of our protection, our most unselfish hopes and our self-sacrificial love than our children. In our very hearts it matters not if the children are mine or yours; they are ours, and the deeply engrained need to protect them from harm and nurture them to fullness is a universal one that unites us.

We live in a society steeped in the culture of competition, and its poison is seen all around us. It has tainted the value of hard work, and it has introduced many cracks in our society. Hierarchies such as social status, income levels have clouded our judgement; discrimination and xenophobia have become commonplace behaviours.

20 minutes ago as I curled up behind my boy, holding his hands and feet to keep them warm, nothing else mattered. As I left the room to catch some sleep he waved his little hand and managed a “bye bye”, his voice still trembling.

My dearest Anne and Caleb,

I had meant to write this a few days ago, but erased the draft I had because I couldn’t quite find the right words to describe what I felt watching the two of you sleep, hours after your birthdays.

We’re all in a different phase of life now. The two of you are no longer babies.

My beautiful Anne, my daughter. I know that it is not easy going to school. I feel a pang reach into my deepest of hearts when you sometimes weep at night, not wanting to face the cold hard reality of school the next day. You say there are too many rules, and that you fear unintentionally breaking any one of them. I wish I could tell you to disregard them, because life isn’t made up of silly rules; and more importantly, life shouldn’t be lived in fear. School, above all, should be the one place you ought to be able to make mistakes safely, and experiment with solutions bound only by your imagination.

I sound like those parents I used to loathe when I was working at the Ministry of Education: the ones who thought they knew better than the system. Like them, I believe I do. Because you are mine, and the world has never seen anyone like you. I know good parenting is learning how to let go, and I pray I’ll have the wisdom to do so when the time comes.

For now, your hand grasps mine while you sleep. You tell me that it helps you fall asleep, but you won’t mind if I need my hand to type this post. I clasp your hand in mine. Times like these are too precious.

My wonderful Caleb, my son. You refuse to be thought of as more little than your sister, and your little legs propel you so quickly forward, out of toddlerhood and now you’re a boy. There’s a certain sweetness about you - the way you tilt your head back and forth, the goofy grin and how you trundle about. I know it won’t be long before your male pride prohibits me from kissing you, but till then, your mother and I cannot resist planting our lips on your face, our hearts holding on to the last vestiges of baby that slips through the sieve of time and memory.

My children, it is customary to pass you some words of wisdom on your birthdays, but any honest parent would confess that we learn more from our children than they’ll ever learn from us. Living with the two of you, watching you grow from infants to the amazing kids you now are, I’ve learned a great deal about life.

As you grow in your consciousness and become more aware of the flaws of your parents, the lesson for me is this: it is imperative that I live an example; the best gift I can give you is that my life be proof of the things I implore to be true, because anything less is hypocrisy. And you, my dear children, deserve the best parents we can be. Even if we fear you may end up hating us for it.

If we believe that life is more than the acquisition of material things, we ought to live it. If we believe that God will supply our needs, we ought not to worry so much, not to safeguard so much, we ought to trust more. We might have less, but we will have more.

You deserve parents that love God with all their hearts, and prove that He reigns over us all, and that there is peace and joy in unconditional submission unto Him.

Your mother and I want so much to be those parents for you. It frightens us, and has been the source of tears. We’ll be brave for you.

At one of our primary schools, a class of primary school students, most of whom were Chinese, sang Munnaeru Vaalibaa during their music lesson. The music teacher glanced out the classroom and saw an elderly Indian woman listening in. Half-afraid that she had massacred the song, the teacher asked, “did we do that correctly?” “Ok!” replied the woman, smiling.

My wife was the music teacher, and as she relates her account to me, we realise it is in these small moments where we can grasp the precious essence that is the multiculturalism we have here in Singapore.

Many years ago, while I was serving as a vehicle technician during my National Service in the army, we had a Chinese New Year celebratory dinner for all the trainee technicians. There was a sizeable number of Muslims among the trainees, so the organisers handed out forms to record our dietary preferences. A group of us decided we would opt for the halal menu, just so we could hang out with the Muslim trainees through the dinner.

That night, about 20 tables were spread out on the workshop floor, all covered in pink disposable plastic tablecloths. We sat with at one of the tables designated for those who had opted for the halal menu. There was a pregnant pause in the air. The Malay trainees were probably wondering if we had sat at the wrong table, and we felt a little uncomfortable; unsure if we had crossed some imaginary territorial lines by being there.

When they began to serve the food, one of the Malay trainees asked me why we weren’t with the other Chinese trainees. I told them that the few of us thought the celebrations would have been more meaningful if we could all be together. I remember the next moment very profoundly: he looked right into me and said, “You are very good guys to have done this.”

I remember this very moment so vividly because it was just a few minutes before that when the caterers brought out suckling pigs for the Chinese tables, and the Muslim food hadn’t arrived at our table. The juxtaposition of my Malay friend’s approval and my very base thought of “OMG did we just miss out on SUCKLING PIG?!?!” elicited a very strong emotional response from within me. I was instantly ashamed to have allowed my appetite to dictate my immediate thoughts. We had a really great time that night, and something significant emerged from our small decision to sign up for the halal menu. There was a brotherhood that looked beyond our differences in culture and united us because we had chosen to let it be so. We had chosen not to let our differences get in the way of our similarities, and to be intrigued and in awe of our diversity, rather than be afraid of it.

It has been many years since that night, but today we still face these same decisions. Singapore stands for a great many things: some noble, others maybe less so. But few things are as precious as our openness to people of different races and backgrounds.

We need to work hard to defend that, especially at the torrid pace globalisation is descending upon all of Asia. This openness to cultural diversity is a part of Singapore we should preserve, a most beautiful part we can proudly hand down to our children.

Last week I had lunch with a successful Singaporean businessman who is now in his 60s. He had seen the world and lived in different cities. Halfway through the meal I decided to ask him, “What made you choose Singapore?”

He paused, thought for a moment, and replied, “To be honest, this is the place I feel least foreign.” He went on to talk about the places he had lived in, and how no matter how close he was with his friends there, a certain element of alienation existed. He added, “at some point in my life I made a choice. I chose that Singapore would be the place; that I could make a difference here, however large or small.”

That moment of clarity rang true for me. So many of us wander through life looking for the perfect home, the perfect partner, the perfect life — without realising that perfection is a quest in motion, not an end state. And that the quest begins only when we commit ourselves to it.

Today marks the 12 year of this blog. I remember the date because 12 years ago, on February 13th, Martin Luther King Jr. weekend, I had the fever of my life coupled with back spasms and thought I was going to die. It was then I decided to crawl to my desk and on to my chair, learn HTML and started this blog. Everyone in the dormitory had gone home for the holiday, and the blog was a means to reach out to my family many, many miles away. It was meant to add a trace of permanence should the fever claim my life that day.

I lived. And continued writing. And now, reading my old posts, I realise that many things have changed since, and I am thankful to have chronicled them. Starting a family with the most beautiful girl in the world; the birth of our two amazing children; the death of a close friend; many wonderful people I have had the privilege of knowing when the online community was small, only to have the years pull them into the stampeding crowd of Facebook profiles.

I am thankful to have written. I am thankful to still be writing. It was a choice I made, lying at what I thought was death’s door, though now looking back in retrospect I do not know whether to laugh at my adolescent penchant for over-dramatising everything, or the fact I turned to HTML for Dummies in my time of need.

My post for this Valentine’s Day has to do with choices. Not so much about debating which choice is right, but that at some point in our lives, we need to stop running away, stop hedging our bets, and commit.

Make the moments count.