2-3-4 Friday: Right and right

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1 thought

I walk into the family’s rental flat, and it’s sparse. There’s a mattress on the floor, and the mother, a Vietnamese national, has tried to build a study space for her child in the corner. The chair is bruised, and the table is small. 

The mother later tells me she’s picked it up downstairs, when someone else threw it away.

She quickly takes out a cold packet of green tea from the fridge, and despite telling her that I’ve water, she insists. “Drink la,” she says in Mandarin.

Internally, I rack up the cost of the green tea, and know that even though it might be 80 cents, it matters when the family only makes a grand total of $1200 a month, or a per capita of $400, in a Singapore where the per capita minimum income standard budget is around $1680.

Her Mandarin is heavily accented, and I know it’s something she said she had to pick up on her own when she first met her Singaporean husband. I also know that it’s caused her pain, knowing that she’s discriminated against. People are not always kind, knowing that she’s not local.

We’re here for a task, and it’s to understand what she needs us to help her with. I’m the social worker in charge. She tells me she’s worried for her child, and she wants her child to do better in school. Despite just being 8 years in Singapore, she’s caught up fast. She knows that if you don’t do well in school, your future is dark.

She hopes for tuition for her child. When I bring this back to my supervisor, she tells me, “maybe you should lower her expectations, tell her it’s not very possible.” Somehow this sits with me over the next few days.

Is it wrong for a low-income mother to dream of her child being better than her? I know my supervisor didn’t mean it that way, but somehow, it is the truth. If you’re poor, there are limited things we can do for you. Stabilize your family with some cash, and then quickly move on.

I insisted that there was more we could do, so I went out to find my own solutions, connecting her with free tutors that could help.

If you’re reading this, you might not be faced with such a situation. But the core question remains,

how do you keep the light whilst all around you, it seems darker and darker?

1 talk

It’s not always right or wrong,

It can be good and good.

1 tip

There are many ways to manage this, but one of the ways I’ve been learning is the concept, of polarity management.

Or of right, and right.

You didn’t read that wrong. In that situation, what my supervisor said was true.

Be pragmatic.

What I wanted for the family too, was good.

Be idealistic.

Pragmatism, and idealism.

A classic polarity. Many of us see such a polarity, and think we should choose one over the other. Be pragmatic! And forsake the part of you that wants to be idealistic for the families you serve.

But managing polarities first requires us to see that we are in a polarity, to choose both poles, and to learn to manage the tension between both.

In this situation, there are many things one would commonly do.

1. Swing towards idealism, and try to do everything you can for the parents to come out of the poverty cycle.
2. Swing towards pragmatism, lower the parents’ expectations, and make your job easier.

Both ways ultimately lead to frustration and resentment. But the third way might be to sit in the discomfort of realizing that you’ve to sit with both good, and good, and to try to manage the swing towards one or the other.

Some call polarity management a dance, where you move from one end to the other, and then move back again. A little like Tango across the room, and Tango-ing back again.

The funny thing is, in that Tango forward, you probably won’t Tango the same way back.

When I was working this case in 2021, I never knew that this was a polarity. 

But I did know that I couldn’t just take the path of least resistance. I wanted to push for more.

Today, if you find yourself caught between a rock and a hard place, it’s worth asking whether it’s simply a problem to solve, or whether it might be a polarity - an unsolvable tension.

Here are some differences.

One thing always sticks with me - the mother, inviting me for dinner one night, to thank me for my work. They were still struggling with money, but that night, she wore her Sunday best, took me to her favorite Vietnamese restaurant, introduced to me the food, and joked with the waitresses in Vietnamese. It was there when I realised that even if you were worried about the future, you could enjoy the now.

Future, and present.

Another polarity.

Credit: Centre for Organisational Resilience (Ngee Ann Polytechnic)

There won’t always be simple answers as the world gets more complex. What we can do is to recognise the false choices we are being forced to make, and to learn that sometimes, it is a polarity, and a dance we can learn to do.

When I exited my work with the family, the family finally bought a new home. I would love to say that I did the work, but I think they were the first ones who showed me how to enjoy the dance of polarities.

May you learn to enjoy the dance too,

John

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