2-3-4 - 23 June 2024

‘Seeking to spark the most potential within you per word of any online newsletter’

1 thought

How To Make Millions Before Grandma Dies, a Thai movie, has been a hit here in Singapore. In the theatres yesterday, there were sobs, sniffles, and tears at critical, touching moments in the story.

In that story, M, a young man in his 20s, has been at home being a game-caster, streaming the livestreams of his gaming adventures. He earns little. Along the way, he meets Mui, a young girl who manages the care of an elderly grandfather and eventually inherits his home.

He gets an idea to ‘make millions’ and begins to care for his grandmother, who has been struck with Stage 4 cancer.

I will stop here so that you can enjoy the movie without spoilers.

There were many things that stood out in that movie, but perhaps the one that struck me was when M asked Mui, ‘Are we wrong for doing this?’

What he was trying to ask was whether it was morally wrong to care, with the expectations of getting something bad in return.

She replies,

No, because we give them something others can’t.

Time.

Many of us reading this newsletter are helping professionals - social workers, therapists, case managers.

We give clients the gift of time. When I was a social worker, I used to be extremely frustrated that the biggest gift of time, one that could never be earned, bought in any form, seemed to be wasted on the clients I work with. 

There weren’t any credible outcomes they were displaying.

To use an analogy, I’ve come to see that approach towards time-giving was seeing the help we gave as a juice blender.

Put in time at one end, and you expect the client’s results at the other.

But perhaps a more sustainable approach is seeing it as a deposit account. 

Where you see the time you invest in someone, as something you place inside a person’s bank account, and it’s up to them whether they eventually withdraw it or not.

I think such an approach saves us a lot of the heartache from giving. In whatever situation you’re in, parenting, caring, working, you will come to a point where you’re giving more than you receive. The frustration starts when we end up asking,

why does none of my effort seem to yield fruit?

How can the recipient be this ungrateful?

How do I produce better outcomes with my effort?

1 talk

It’s not expecting nothing in return, but extolling ownership.

1 tip

The oft-cited advice is to give, without expecting anything in return.

I think this is bad advice, because you might find yourself harbouring anger in your heart at how you’re not repaid for your efforts. It might also be a waste of your time because you might be giving in areas which do not yield the best fruit.

For example, when I was a social worker attending to clients, I came to realise that some clients would make use of what I supported them with to turn their lives around.

Others wouldn’t.

What was the difference between these positive deviants, and those who didn’t mange to do so well despite similar levels of support?

Research shows it is the degree to which children are seen (and supported) as agents of their own lives, and not victims.

There are many things, but the value I noted was the degree of ownership they had over their lives. Those who behave like owners (or ‘captains of their own lives’) tended to:

1. Be focused on what they can control, and not the circumstance
   1. For example, one low-income family I worked with had a father who kept reminding me about the pain in his foot. His daughter on the other hand, focused on her job, and how she could improve the earnings from that job, by going for additional qualifications.

Seeing the time you invest in someone’s life as an investment, and not simply something you do to ‘feel good’, with no expectations, might be a better way of using your limited time on this Earth to distribute greater good within the world.

I will say this gently, but

Unfortunately not all people might be worth your time.

Others might experience better fruits working with them, but maybe it isn’t your particular time to bear fruit with them.

When you begin to have the gut instinct that that is happening, then it might be time to cut your sunk costs, and recognise,

even heroes can’t save everybody.

John

Live Young, Live Well - Work Your Love

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