Living Spring 活泉-Vol8-2016

3days 2nights
By Sai Fun
From the 1st to the 3rd of October this year, I had the
privilege of joining the church at its annual retreat. It
isn’t often that I can sit back and afford three days and
two nights of essentially doing ‘nothing’. Doing nothing
wasn’t true, of course, but it felt like that when compared
to the usual hectic urban lifestyle. So when presented
with an opportunity such as this, I tend to have tendrils
of thought that usually spring from noticing the behindthe-scenes,
less dramatic aspects of an incident. Three
things I took away with me from the Church Camp at the
Methodist Centre in Port Dickson:
Hug, and Often
“All beginnings are hard,” wrote
Chaim Potok in his book In the
Beginning. Yes, they are. I grew up in
a family that didn’t practise hugging
each other. The reason probably was,
as the Camp speaker said, that it just
wasn’t the Chinese way. We shy away
from direct praise and overt shows of
affection.
But we live and learn.
Over time, I allowed the harder edges of my Chinese
heritage to be softened by the ready warmth of the
Punjabis when they met and hugged, and by the gentler
culture of the Malay side of my family to whom it was
natural to exchange cheek-to-cheek greetings. Right-leftright.
I am no longer averse to hugs from anyone, and a
single right (or left) cheek greeting is also sufficient to
convey sincere well-wishes.
Over time too, my siblings individually learnt to give each
other heartfelt hugs when greeting or saying goodbye. My
dad returned the hugs a little self-consciously at first, but
he soon warmed up to the practice; my shy mum, a little
less so.
Now, when I greet any of my five grandnephews and
grandniece (two more sweethearts on the way), I make it
a point to embrace them and to take the time to say the
words “I love you”, or simply, “Sayang”. They are all under
five years old and haven’t yet learnt to squirm and say
“Eww!”, so the advantage is mine. My hope is that as they
grow, hugs from me will become so commonplace that
they will be comfortable with the action even as adults,
if I live that long. I would like them to know, beyond the
shadow of a doubt, that no matter what befalls them in
life, they are unconditionally loved. Train up a child in the
way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart
from it. (Proverbs 22:6)
Shows of sincere affection and gratitude are like any
other action. Do it often enough and they become second-
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