S'porean lady writes beautiful FB post discussing how we measure success & what we are worth

Because Spring will come again, and they will grow and blossom soon.

Nyi Nyi Thet | December 18, 2018, 02:19 PM

Tam Wai Jia is an incredibly accomplished individual.

She is a doctor, an author, a painter, a humanitarian philanthropist, and has even made it to the Forbes 30 under 30 list.

But what if she had done none of that?

That essentially was what went through her head when she went for an ultrasound at a hospital.

Two forms/one form

Her visit to the hospital was immediately punctuated by administrative issues.

Namely, whether she needed one form or two forms.

"As I stood my ground, the lady across the counter became increasingly annoyed, saying once again, 'You need to have the other forms.'”

'No, I’m only here for the ultrasound to see my baby,' I said. 'So I’ve only got one form.'

As her voice got louder, and her tone, more irritated, I explained myself,  'I don’t want the blood tests, I've chosen not to do them.'

She frowned, rolled her eyes and then tsk-tsked at me. In one moment, I felt thoroughly uneducated.

The issue was a misunderstanding at its core, but the staff did not let up at all.

"By this time, a belligerent, matronly lady who looked like her supervisor had trudged up to me, her sleeves rolled up and her arms folded.

As she towered over me, a little Asian mom in her shorts and lululemons stained with my toddler's yoghurt handprints, with little Sarah-Faith trailing behind me, a loud, dragon-like bellow echoed through the waiting hall, 'Look lady, you gotta have ALL the forms okay? You understand me?'"

This was when Tam cleared up the misconception with a slight appeal to authority.

“'Yes, I do understand,' I said quietly, a little intimidated and embarrassed, with pressure behind my eyes.

With my face flushed, I half-whispered to her, 'I’m a medical doctor. I understand these tests and their implications very well. But that’s exactly why I only want the ultrasound, and not the blood tests.'"

In a nutshell, Tam had needed only one form for the ultrasound, as she had opted out of the blood test, but the nurses had assumed that she did not understand what was going on.

Their attitudes also seemed to change once Tam had uttered the word "doctor".

'Immediately, both sets of eyes fell onto the desk. Within a second, the air, fraught with tension, had dissolved into a furious typing and scribbling. 'You’re next.'"

Circumstances

Tam knew she had pulled out her "trump" card by mentioning her medical credentials, which played a huge part in changing the nurse's perception of her.

"All I did, was let them know, that in my past life, I was a doctor. That I was well-informed. That I spoke English with an accent but it did not mean I was uneducated.

Everything changed in that moment. Suddenly, I was no longer “just a mom”. At once, I was somebody smart, somebody useful to society, somebody worthy of respect."

Which brought forward a very important question.

"Was I not all those things before?"

That question haunted her for a while, and made her question the difference between jobs, namely what she called "jobs of success" and "jobs of significance".

"It was a friend who articulated it for me- that there are differences between “jobs of success” and “jobs of significance.” While they may not always be mutually exclusive, the world tends to look to jobs of success, even when we have left them to choose a different kind of job that is of deeper significance to us."

Jobs of success, in this instance, would be viewed by many as a doctor, which Tam was.

On the other hand, jobs of significance, according to Tam, could be a full-time mom, or someone starting a non-profit without a salary -- which Tam also has done.

"I wish that people knew that moms, too, were, are people with a trajectory- that I once scheduled your grandmother’s cataract surgery, and wrote your father’s prescription for his discharge medication when he was admitted for a heart attack. That I recently started a global non-profit that I hope could make our world a better place."

The most insidious form of judgement sometimes comes about through comparisons.

"So who am I now? Now that my peers are earning five figure salaries and using their higher degrees to buy cars, go places. Who am I, this little mom who now gives her little one hugs and kisses at a neighbourhood library, who works at her next book behind her desk when her little one is asleep, who cries at times because there are days she misses her old life, that old, crazy-busy, high-achieving, no-time-to-process-life kind of life."

When Tam considers the possibility that she has not achieve any of her accolades, she was thrown into an existential crisis:

"But above that, I found myself in an existential crisis. What if I hadn’t been a doctor before, what if I had never won all those accolades and awards, would I still be worth the same to others? Would people treat me differently?"

Seeing things differently

But those perspectives, for better or for worse, are seen through a societal spectrum.

Tam reminded herself, and those reading her post in some ways, that there is a different way of measuring value and worth.

"It took me a while to remember, that heaven is a place that measures everything differently. It preserves only what cannot rust and what moth cannot destroy on earth.

And while it may not keep record of the wealth, or status or privilege that we’ve accumulated here, the love we have sown as seeds on earth, things which our human eyes see as fading and small and meaningless, grow as eternal fields of gold there.

In heaven, our deeds and character, not our earthly success, become fields of eternal significance."

She also gave this lovely seasonal analogy.

"In the recent Fall season when all the trees changed into incandescent golds, when they started losing their leaves and a bit of their glamorous summery lustre, I learned, not to despise but admire them for the season they were in.

Because Spring will come again, and they will grow and blossom soon."

And even if you do not believe in a higher power, the following perspective might be a nice one to adopt.

"I am learning, with excruciating pain on some days, that my worth is not dependent on my productivity, my identity, or on my label that day as “Mom” or “Doctor” or “Award recipient”, that my ability and inherent value do not diminish because I am doing "less".

I am learning, that everyone goes through different seasons in life, and we can all be kinder, gentler, more gracious to those who are going through Autumn, because even winter will come and fly by."

Nice.

Here's Tam's Facebook post in full.

Image from Tam's Facebook page