Singapore: Forgoing the rat race for the 'lilies of the field'

Straits Times 21 Jan 08;

In the end, we are judged in our lives for all our work - not just the work we are paid to do.

Taking a year off from work may not add to his bonus, but Yen Feng discovers a different measure of wealth

THE season for announcing promotions and bonuses is, for many rookies, the annual measure of success.

But it does not account for work we put into our personal relationships, which is harder to quantify - you do not exactly get cash for how good a son, brother, friend or spouse you have been.

That part belongs to another race: the silent marathon to show we are more than the sum of our bank accounts. It is a race we seldom talk about over drinks. It is a race that is easy to forget because we are our own arbiters.

But it exists.

So I consider myself fortunate to have had a reminder of it at the start of my career.

A year ago, I turned in my press pass to take care of a dying loved one.

In that time, my peers whizzed ahead, bagging awards I knew would give them an edge over me in the company. At first, I was envious. Then I thought: How much of it really matters?

A recent e-mail from a senior executive in the newsroom last week brought the point home.

It cited a speech by Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist Anna Quindlen. In it, she tells a class of graduating students that life's measure isn't about 'the next promotion, the bigger paycheck, the larger house', but about cultivating one's soul.

'Consider the lilies of the field,' she said.

As Singaporeans, we have been trained from a young age to covet success in its most admired form: cash.

We compute our worth in dollars and cents. We work hard - the result of being ranked and banded in school from the age of nine.

And, if you take literally what Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew said last week - 'Retirement is death' - we will be working not only harder, but longer than ever.

But it is precisely because we push ourselves so hard that Ms Quindlen's words are all the more relevant.

The challenge is to expand our definition of the words 'success' and 'reward', beyond promotions and bonuses.

In the end, we are judged in our lives for all our work - not just the work we are paid to do.

Since my loved one died, I have adjusted certain priorities in my life.

After a year away from the office, I am ready to buckle down and earn my keep. But I am also working on that other, 'lilies' race.

I know how much it means to listen, to show up, to make time for the people who mean something in our lives.

After all, time, unlike money, is finite. At the end of one's life, no one has been known to say: 'I wish I spent more time in the office.'

So me, I am looking up an old friend. Or lighting a candle at dinner.

That's the part I'm leaving for the lilies.