I dream of home

And now for all the people of Africa, the beloved country. Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika, God save Africa. But he would not see that salvation. It lay afar off, because men were afraid of it. Because, to tell the truth, they were afraid of him, and his wife, and Msimangu, and the young demonstrator. And what was there evil in their desires, in their hunger? That men should walk upright in the land where they were born, and be free to use the fruits of the earth, what was there evil in it? Yet men were afraid, with a fear that was deep, deep in the heart, a fear so deep that they hid their kindness, or brought it out with fierceness and anger, and hid it behind fierce and frowning eyes. They were afraid because they were so few. And such fear could not be cast out, but by love.

It was Msimangu who had said, Msimangu who had no hate for any man, I have one great fear in my heart, that one day when they turn to loving they will find we are turned to hating.

Yes, it is the dawn that has come. The titihoya wakes from sleep, and goes about its work of forlorn crying. The sun tips with light the mountains of Ingeli and East Griqualand. The great valley of the Umzimkulu is still in darkness, but the light will come there. Ndotsheni is still in darkness, but the light will come there also. For it is the dawn that has come, as it has come for a thousand centuries, never failing. But when that dawn will come, of our emancipation, from the fear of bondage and the bondage of fear, why, that is a secret.

-- Alan Paton, Cry, the Beloved Country (1948)

___________

Los Angelenos dislike many things about their city. No one likes the airport, with its interminable delays, traffic snarls, and complete chaos most of the time. No one likes the traffic and the jams at all hours of the day, and how making a 20-km drive from one part of the city to another can take up to two hours. No one likes the smog and how it hangs, like a yellowed and cancerous funereal veil, over the entire county. No one likes the segregated, cankerous neighbourhoods, the racial tensions and the crime; the 1992 race riots, for some people, remain unavenged. And the bureaucracy! A few days ago, the Los Angeles Times reported how several thousand teachers have gone underpaid or unpaid because of a long-running glitch; some teachers have resorted to taking out short-term loans to pay their bills and rent.

And yet, despite so much to dislike about Los Angeles, nearly all the young people I’ve met, spoken to or read about love this city. They love its energy and creativity, its people, its promises and opportunities. Many can’t imagine living anywhere else, because to them, Los Angeles is a city of possibilities, its doors open to anyone – of any stripe, color, or persuasion – who has a deep fire in the bones to succeed.

I wonder whether we have experienced a little bit of the reverse in Singapore. We love our airport. We generally like our public transport system and our roads. (Anyone who has complained about jams on the PIE or the CTE at rush hour should try driving on any of the main highways in or around Los Angeles at 5 pm.) We like our greenery (Please, please, please – no new expressway cutting through the central catchment area!). We generally express gratitude for the lack of racial and religious tensions. (Question to ponder: What has the absence of racial and religious tensions resulted in?) We grudgingly concede that we have a system, a bureaucracy that works. (Disclosure: I am part of that system.) And we are happy with our progress, our economic growth, the glowing reports that praise our economic competitiveness, and so on.

But I have met so few young Singaporeans who unabashedly express their affection, love and faithfulness to the idea, the concept of Singapore. There is so much diffidence and ambivalence instead. We love many things about Singapore. But strip away the achievements, the edifices of success like the airport and the hotels: do we love what’s left behind? Or is there anything left behind at all?

In the Singapore of my dreams, the answer is yes. I hope my children can grow up in a country imbued with a sense of optimism that comes not just from our economic prospects but from a deep-hearted sense of our rightful place in the world. We might be small, but we can do great things to ease the suffering of the world, not because we have to in order to ensure our survival, but because we should. We might be small, but we have a seat at the table of great nations and peoples. We might be small, but our people have big hearts and minds. Our vision matters more.

Laughter fills the air of the Singapore of my dreams. We know how to laugh at ourselves. We know not to take ourselves too seriously. In good humor, we sometimes decide not to “set the record straight” when the record gets crooked, because we have confidence in (a) the truth, and (b) our people. In the Singapore of my dreams, certain bloggers do not get disinvited from the print media. Our laughter matters more.

In the Singapore of my dreams, people come first, and then principles and doctrine. Without human considerations, principles and doctrine slide too easily into the cesspool of dogma. In the Singapore of my dreams, dogma is a four-letter word. We do not listen to dogma. We listen to people. We respect people’s opinions and views. We listen, even when we don’t want to. We listen, even when we disagree. And most importantly, when we listen, admit that we might be wrong. (Perhaps my dream of Singapore might be all wrong – but I hope not.) We recognise that others, very different from ourselves, might bring new pieces to the puzzle of life that we are trying to understand. We do not outlaw “difference”. In the Singapore of my dreams, there is no room for symbolic laws that even Those In Charge have said they do not intend to enforce robustly. There is no room for fear. Compassion matters more.

In the Singapore of my dreams, we do not use invoke the moral views of a majority to justify the laws of a diverse and plural community that deems itself a country of possibilities. The light will come. People matter more.


In the Singapore of my dreams, we are explorers. Each of us hold different clues to an unknown destination. And each of us only see one step ahead at a time. Darkness and uncertainty shrouds everything else. We might be afraid, but not paralysed, so we keep pressing on, one uncertain step at a time, upheld by the insight of others when ours fails. And when we do so, giving thanks for the helping hand of those whom we thought were weak, weird or simply different, we find that the destination becomes unimportant. The journey matters more.

In the Singapore of my dreams, there will be room for dreamers, people who do not speak the language of national accounts, gross domestic products and trade balances, but who create a language of home. In this Singapore, such dreamers no longer need to leave to discover their vocabulary. The richness of life in Singapore provides instead provides a fertile soil for emotive insemination. Together, we can resurrect the dead places, calling them home. (Thank you, Boey Kim Cheng. Come home.) Dreamers do not matter more than economists. It is what they form as a community, what they accomplish by listening to and learning from each other, that matters more.

In the Singapore of my dreams, my children can breathe and run and grow tall enough to touch the light that streams through the leaves of our angsanas and rain trees in the mornings and evenings. No tuition. No force-feeding. No music lessons that create adults for whom the sight of a piano (or violin) induces a nervous rash rather than an innate sense of delight. They are the ones for whom I keep on dreaming, despite the disappointments. They are the ones that matter.