DADDY, WILL YOU BE PROUD OF ME?

The little success I can have today is due to the intellect, courage, foresight and perceptive insight I inherited from my father.

He is an extremely talented man. My grandparents were poor and he did not have a chance to go to school. But my father self-taught himself to recognise Chinese characters and read the newspaper. He was from that generation of people who could speak many languages and dialects, Malay, Mandarin, Hokkien, Cantonese. Making friends with any person was a piece of cake to him.

I am adept at mending the deficiencies in destinies and patching up sentient beings’ broken spirits. I infuse positive energies and hope in them, to breathe a new life into their souls.

This innate ability was passed on to me by my father as well.

My father loves to study electrical equipment. He shops at second-hand markets and buys other men’s trash as treasures back. He repairs all kinds of electrical stuff and vehicles, and is especially good at assembling old things to form something new.

I see potential in people, young or old. My father sees value in things, new or used.

Growing up, I naively thought that men were naturally great at repairing stuff. Until I married and witnessed my house fan gasping for its last breath and, kaput.

My heart welled up in emotions. Dad would always be the best in the whole wide world…

My father loves praying to deities. This belief in him had never wavered for the past 40 years. It was also because of him, I had very strong religious beliefs.

My mum said my character was very similar to my father. We both had black humour and black faces. We don’t smile a lot by default. He likes black coffee while I only love Coca-cola. Similarly black, yet regrettably, I did not inherit my father’s good looks and charisma.

No matter how rebellious or incapable a kid may be, he/she would always carve for the love and care from his/her parents.

My father could not understand the many choices I made for my life.

He did not approve my choice of being a model. He did not like that I chose to be a cabin crew. He asked why I did not look for a proper 9-5 job.

In other words, why couldn’t I be like other normal girls?

I think our destinies indeed run down the same vein. My father too made many outrageous decisions with his life, back in his heydays.

In my first F&B business, my dad helped me with the cooking. But when things did not go my way, I flared up at him from time to time.

The second time I did business, I got so broke that I had to terminate the insurance policies I was paying for him.

My father never blamed me.

Then, I was always most stressed out pre-CNY yet never once, did my father chase me for pocket money.

I applied a mobile phone number for him but most often than not, his line got suspended because I had no money to pay my bills. He never ranted at me and went to get a line himself, telling me not to worry.

My father is 80 years old. I can finally afford to give him more money readily.

Yet he always asks, “Do you have enough?”

My father can not comprehend what job I am doing now. Terms like Facebook, YouTube, Lives and video production are very foreign to him.

Combining Buddhism and Chinese Metaphysics to deliver sentient beings, by igniting their wisdom and solving their problems, sounds abstract.

Throw in more jargon like subscribers, followers, comments, shares and likes, my father starts to find this whole social media universe unreliable.

Very unreliable.

He says I can give him less money.

I have studied so much yet I am still causing worry to my father. I guess this image of me as a talented but poor daughter, who could not pay her handphone bills, is too deeply entrenched in my father’s heart.

While my father loves praying, he is never a true Buddhist. I choose to stand in the forefront to propagate the Dharma. Because I hope…tiny as it may be…that the merits can help my parents to leave this world in peace and minimal pain, and be reborn in the Pureland.

In this firefly existence we have here, I am proud to have him as my father.

Sorry, Daddy, to have brought you worries.

Thank you for giving me what you could, despite how harsh your time had been.

Happy Father’s Day, Daddy. May you be happy every day.