Now following the theme for this week, I intend to write on this
What is the biggest complaint you have about a person in your life? Also, what is the biggest compliment you could pay the same person. In each case explain your answer. Your family are excluded from this writing suggestion.
If you have missed the post, here is the link!
@galenkp/we112-weekend-engagement-concept
Hands down, this would be my tuition teacher during my secondary school days. I would always refer to him as Sir or "Cher" (short form for teacher). He taught me when I was in Secondary School, well supposedly helping me for my Math and Science
Now for some context, I live in Singapore. In Singapore, we stress heavily on education. In preparation for my GCE O'Levels National Examinations, my parents got me this tutor who charges a pretty steep rate. He is supposedly there to help me with my studies and pull up my grades so that I may enter a really good school, supposedly...
Now this guy, the compliment and complaint I would give him is him being weird, extremely weird. In fact, though I am respectful person, I did one day tell him that he is extremely weird. And his response was, "thank you so much you are so kind" (you can start to get a sense of how weird he is by now right?). Now why would I say he is weird. Apparently, though he helps me with his studies, he does not behave like any other adults/teachers. He is more of a really cool friend than a teacher. For starters, he used to be a pilot, and got his hands into some really cool military stuff, and he also does some really really jaw dropping occupation that are state secret. I thought he was exaggerating, until one day he showed me the photos. I was like, "who the hell are you???"
Now that is his background, his methodologies are even weirder. We literally can sit in for our 2hr tuition sessions, and there are many times he would not even have me do a single question or teach me anything related to a subject. Instead, he would share so much real life examples and lessons, that in retrospect are so darn important that I am thankful of as he is the only one that told me thus far in my life. I couldn't really understand, and I often asked him why are our lessons "fun"? He shared, cause lessons are meant to be fun. If we dread learning, then we will never learn. He always shared with me that life is not all about grades, and he is here to help me succeed and achieve what I want as much as he can. I recalled he once asked me, what do I want. Being a 16 year old, I told him I want to score an A for the exams. He rejected the answer and said "nope, can't do that. What do you really want". I was like dude, this guy is a nutcase! But he later then explained to me. Getting an A is what society want from us, what my parents want from me. That is not what I truly want. What I want, is for example to start a business, to be a bummer and slack my life away, or be to enter Harvard. He shared that if we can enter Harvard without scoring a single A, would I still have wanted that A? I was blown away, but I immediately understood what he meant.
Now here is the peculiar thing. Though he is supposedly there to help me with my grades, we did not have much lessons on the subjects. Nevertheless, just by listening to him, somehow for some reasons my grades started to pick up. Everything pretty much clicked without me trying to. He thought me life lessons, from societal demands and expectations to personal finance and all. He encouraged me when I told him what I aspire to be, and in not just lip service. He genuinely believed, and even gave me an action plan on how I can do it. Even after I graduated, he timed his message and dropped me a cold text out from the blue one day, and gave me a ridiculously precious internship opportunity. My parents engaged him to help me pull up my grades. Instead, what they got was someone who set my life straight. I couldn't understand the rationale behind his actions, but I trusted him more than anyone would and followed his instructions without any complains. Turns out, this guy literally set me up for success.
Since then, he shared with me why being labelled weird, is one of the best compliments you can get though it is seemingly a complain. Basically, being weird is to behave in a manner that the society fails to comprehends, or in a way you are just way way way out of the league that you are just working in your own manner. He shared, no successful person in history that really did something for mankind was ever normal. They are all weird in some way. Why? Because if they are normal, chances are he/she will not have seen a problem and acted differently to rectify the problem. Only if he/she is weird enough to behave differently and think differently from everyone else, then he would be able to act on it and start making a change. I agree completely, and I understood the rationale.
Since then, being weird, a seemingly negative description for a person, is now the best form of compliment I can ever get!
