At a time when the sentiment behind holidays is more cynically advertised than seriously pursued, I decided to celebrate Mother’s Day, not with a floral bouquet, not with a fancy dinner, not with a Hallmark card, but with a handwritten, sincerely directed, letter.
Let me say that I now fully appreciate you, Mother, for all the hard work, passion, and dedication you invested into making me the man that I am today. The chief contribution that you made to my life was a sense of aesthetics, or a theory of beauty versus ugliness. As Nietzsche put it, it is about “giving style to one’s character.” Without you, my life is gray, washed out, colorless. And there would be no Steinway in your living room for me to “practice makes perfect!”
There were times when I was a teenager that I hated you for making me work so hard. I saw in you nothing but a harsh taskmaster who relished being in power. But that hatred was completely unfounded. You just wanted me to be the very best that I could be! And there was another reason. You knew from lived experience how hard life could be. You simply wanted me to be prepared for everything life threw at me. There is absolutely a place for tough love!
As an assistant professor of management at City University of Hong Kong, I confided in my supervisor, Kwok Leung, that I wanted to help my colleagues out by diverting some of my research funding to them. Dr. Leung immediately disapproved. He told me a story about giant pandas raised in captivity. Every need of theirs was taken care of. They never suffered want. Of course, when they were released into the wild, they all promptly perished. Lesson learned!
Now, as a fifty-year-old, after all those years of training and practicing, the promise has been kept. I am better now than I have ever been, even more than those years before the bipolar diagnosis. I certainly hope so! After all that therapy and medication, you would expect that something good would come of it. As I told my audience at Angel Villa Sober Living last week, I tell myself now: forget about the past; focus only on the future!
I have a feeling that opportunity will present itself in the near future. Of course, it will not be handed to me on a silver platter. Not at all! Instead, it is because I place more and more irons in the fire, so that I strike when the iron is hot more frequently. Because of your motherhood, I realize that this is what I have to do to pursue the Good Life, which I believe is the true meaning of this country’s Declaration of Independence: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness!
I will close for now, and I wish you a very happy and healthy Mother’s Day. Just so you know, perhaps this Mother’s Day letter is my own declarative Heiligenstadt Testament. I am ready to catch Opportunity, or I am not ready to, and therefore lose the catch of a lifetime. Wish me luck!
Gone fishing,Jason W Park
