Christopher had been asking me to watch the program
for a while now. It was produced
by threesixzero productions for Mediacorp.
He wanted me to take a look at their filming and editing
style. He felt their work attained a high level of
entertainment value, yet strong aesthetic appeal.
I hardly watch local television. So finding the time to sit in front
of the TV is rare. I’ve missed several episodes and as luck would
have it I could only watch one episode and it was the last episode
of the season. I dragged Hwei Min to catch it with me though it
was already midnight on a weekday.
That episode was about two Singaporeans living in Cambodia,
running a school and home for orphans. What really struck a chord
with the both of us was the Singaporean entrepreneur who have
set up the school, introduced only as Robert.
He is probably in his late fifties? His goal? To set up as many of
such homes as he can all around the world.
He shared a story “It matters to this one”. I’ve tried to look for
the original author of the story, but couldn’t find any information.
As I walked along the seashore
This young boy greeted me.
He was tossing stranded starfish
Back to the deep blue sea.
I said “Tell me why you bother,
Why you waste your time this way.
There’s a million stranded starfish
Does it matter, anyway?”
And he said, “It matters to this one.
It deserves a chance to grow.
It matters to this one.
I can’t save them all I know.
But it matters to this one,
I’ll return it to the sea.
It matters to this one,
And it matters to me.”
Why did it strike a chord? As part of our retreat, Hwei Min and I
practise visualizing our future. We go through an exercise of
imagining our future self talking to us now. The idea is to make our
dreams bigger than our fears.
30 years later, if we will be successful, who will we have to be?
What will we say to ourselves now?
We have set our goal to set up schools and homes just like the
one on the show. (OK, to be more accurate, we only thought of
setting up one.) We want to figure out how to set up a community
of children who are not given the opportunity to learn, give them
a loving environment, help them to grow, and most of all, make all
of them successful. Then to make the community grow bigger by
inspiring them to give back.
Watching Robert was like watching our future selves speaking to us.
This is how to do it. This is “Why”. And the “Why” is because it
matters to this one, and it matters to me.
