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Sometimes as I sift through the thousands of photos I’ve taken over the years, a sort of hazy third person perspective comes over me, like an out of body experience as I look at the visual evidence of what seems like someone else’s life.

There’s a chronology of sorts: the photos of the carefree student at the turn of the millennium; the portfolio work of a starting professional photographer; photos of our new home, then unfurnished and unrenovated; the births of our two children; and the many, many weddings of friends over the years.

Youth doesn’t seem that long ago, but my Sunday School students remind me that time has flown silently past. They joke about how old I am. They’ve grown up in a world that always had mobile phones, while I reminisce about pagers and the alpha-numeric acrobatics we had to perform to send messages. 07734…stuff like that.

During my carefree student days when I first got serious about photography, I chased after every storm because I was madly in love with the dramatic contrast they provided. Tucson skies were mostly clear and cloudless, so storm clouds added much needed texture to the wide open sky.

Now more than a decade removed, I found myself sitting in my study this afternoon, finally getting some alone time after having spent the earlier part of the day taking care of the kids. The thunderstorm outside was just subsiding and the evening sun shone bright - perfect conditions for a rainbow.

Sure enough, my Facebook feed started filling up with rainbow sightings (quite a number of double rainbow photos too). The photographer in me stirred, so I did my duty and looked outside the various windows in the house and realised our house was facing the wrong direction. So I headed back to my study to chill. I left those days of chasing storms and sunsets behind me.

I feel old.

Faith comes into the study all excited about the possibility of seeing the same rainbow, and to be honest, her suggestion that I go downstairs to take a photo of it felt a lot like an extra chore, but I grabbed my camera and put on my sandals. Then I held her hand and we stepped outside.

It felt like an adventure.

When we ran to the bend in the road and spotted the rainbow we literally squealed with delight. She whipped out her phone, but I kept running to the vantage point I knew I’d get more sky. And as I ran, those steps felt so familiar, and a decade melted away. The golden setting sun, the dark clouds, the slight drizzle, and the beautiful arc of a rainbow that hung so gloriously in the sky.

I stood there, young and carefree again.

The rainbow eventually lost its glow and faded, and I crossed the street back to my wife who was waiting for me. As I crossed the street the years came back: the whole stream of photographs of all the memories we’ve collected along the way. I held her hand, so very thankful that she shook me out of lethargy for a trip back in time.

It was nice to know that Faith brings out the original person in me. The person I was when we first got together two decades ago. The writer, the photographer, the dreamer.

My best partner, my friend and my love. I could ask for no better companion. I could not have asked for a better journey thus far.

My daughter Anne asked her mother, “How did you know that Daddy was the man you wanted to marry?”

My wife, caught off-guard, gave what I thought was a decent answer. “Daddy is a good man who loves God very much. He’s a good leader of the family.”

Anne: “…but I thought you were the leader of the family.”

-_-‘

I often wonder if my role as a parent lies not so much in the education of my children, but in protecting them from the process of “growing up” which seems to rob them of the many wonderful attributes they already intrinsically possess.

When Anne used our bathroom two nights ago, she used the last scrap of toilet paper on a used roll, when the rest of us adults had already moved on to a brand new roll. When she was done, she picked up the toilet roll core and laughed aloud with glee — she now had another to add to her huge collection of handmade toys.

Her table is strewn with them: used toilet rolls fashioned into binoculars and telescopes; old Yakult bottles carefully painted over and decorated, each holding a different prize she placed in them; used pieces of cardboard formed into a treasure chest, complete with sticky tape hinges and a rounded cover. She lives in this bohemian paradise created by her own two hands, a pair of scissors and her unlimited imagination.

This very moment of reflection has me a little embarrassed to find myself struggling with a depleted sense of self-worth. I find myself wanting things I don’t need, whether it is a condominium so the kids can go swimming whenever they like, or a car that’ll open up new places and adventures for us. The fact that I can’t quite afford these things gets to me a little, and I sometimes wonder if all this “serving the people” kool-aid that I’ve been feeding myself to a life spent in public service will eventually leave me bitter.

It is also in these moments God speaks to me through my children, reminding me that joy is not found in possessing things, but in creating things. Creating things that make others happy, creating things that communicate beauty and goodness. Creating things, whether words or music, photographs or living memories that fill the moment with such abundance brings true happiness. Coming back to where it all begins — to the Creator — and being thankful not just for the things we have, but for the things we can share.

It’s Anne’s fourth day in Primary school, and she cried before bed last night. It was a culmination of small reasons, and it was a little heartbreaking to see my little girl have to deal with so much change. Faith and I understand that it is a necessary part of growing up, but it is also shocking how quickly one can turn from teacher advocate (“parents, please give the teachers space to do their job!”) to demanding parent (“of course I know my child better than her teacher!”).

To see her tears flow down her cheeks as she sobbed, recounting in mortal fear how the Primary One level manager told the kids that they had to learn the National Anthem at home or they wouldn’t be allowed to join in the flag lowering ceremony at the end of the school day, or how the same manager threatened the children with detention after school if they didn’t keep quiet, opened old wounds for me.

Like many of my very closest peers, the Singapore education system was a bad fit for me. I spent years — a whole decade, now when I come to think of it — dreading school. There were only a half a handful of teachers who understood that I never did homework not because I was lazy, but because handwriting was painful and extremely tedious for me. The production of homework into written form seriously impeded the speed of my learning.

Anne, at the young age of 6, has had to face so many new mental constructs the past few days. Where at home Faith and I try our best to ensure she is given real reasons behind our decisions, it is unlikely she’ll have that luxury in an education system designed for mass-production of compliant students. For example, at a very young age, Anne was given a lollipop. She came to us asking for permission to eat it. We gave her our permission but told her that lollipops weren’t very good for the body. Much as she wanted it, she walked over to the trash-bin and threw it away.

Now in school, she will be told to do many things, without reasons explicitly communicated because it is not expedient to do so when catering to hundreds at a time. She will be told to obey, “because it is the way it is”, or “because I said so”, and I secretly hope she won’t until she gets a good reason. We will need to teach her how to derive good reasons through observation, and not expect it to always be spoon-fed to her. There is so much we will need to teach her as parents, but we also need to keep an eye on the school system and what it teaches, and whether those things build her up, or tear her down.

Everything is sorta the same, but different, you know what I mean?

Whether it is the stuff we face as individuals: mid-life crises, trying to maintain a healthy work-life balance, a prioritisation of the material and the intangible; or the issues we face as nations: a shift in population demographics towards an increasingly ageing population, the rising cost of healthcare on national coffers, corporate greed; there is a certain puzzling characteristic about these “#firstworldproblems”.

They feel so inane at times, especially when compared to the challenges faced by developing countries. Challenges such as famine, war or poverty, which have plagued us since the dawn of creation. First-world problems seem unique to our time, yet are similar to third-world problems in that they are fundamentally driven by the same primeval forces of self-interest and greed.

What makes most first-world problems feel unique is the adjustment we have had to make because of a significant shift in our perception of time.

One of the key changes that has contributed to the uniqueness of our situation is the dramatic increase in life expectancy. We have never had so many people live such long lives. Traditional career spans may no longer yield sufficient savings to tide one through an extended retirement period, and then there’s the issue of healthcare…

The undeniable fact is that we now have more time.

On the converse side, we are increasing the speed at which we live our lives. We demand faster promotions as we climb the corporate ladder. We have an endless barrage of information and data fed to us through multiple channels and devices. We want to get to the good life earlier in our lifetimes than the generations that have preceded us.

So on one hand, better healthcare has given us more time, and on the other hand, the demands of city life have compressed time, enabling us to reach desired standards of living earlier, achieving more in a shorter time when compared to our predecessors.

What have we done with all that extra time saved?

Do we pursue ever-increasing standards of living, filling our lives with more material things, only to feel enslaved to work longer in order to fuel the demands of a high-maintenance life, fearing that life itself will stretch beyond our means?

Or do we live more frugal lives, investing the excess time in charity, or solving the problems of developing nations?

There have been recent discussions about how privileged first-world inhabitants should not arrogantly portray ourselves as saviours of those living in the third-world. I was initially a little apprehensive at condoning a slowdown in efforts to tackle issues faced by millions who live in developing countries, but a little introspection revealed to me where those authors were hinting at.

Maybe the developing countries aren’t the only ones in need.

Maybe we are the impoverished. Maybe we are the ones who are starving. Maybe, just maybe, we are the ones in need of saving, for surely we have, in our quest to evade physical death, lost our grasp on the value of life. We have forgotten the joys of parenthood and the warmth of family. In the first-world, we speak more often about “the cost of raising a child” than the intrinsic rightness of having children. We no longer revere our aged as wise and deserving of respect, but bemoan the fact they are no longer economically productive and are a “burden”.

We have gained the most precious thing in all the world: time, and we have absolutely no idea what to do with it except complain.

The battle, enshrined in Kennedy’s famous words, “against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease and war itself” is a rallying cry for us to help our brethren in need. But we enter the fray not because we are saviours heaven-sent, but because it is in this same battle we put to action our convictions; where we stave off a first-world amnesia and rediscover the important things in life, restoring the sanctity of time with a life well-lived.