Rarotonga

Aitutaki

Cade, Ella and me wading across the Aitutaki lagoon

My family and I spent last week on Rarotonga and Aitutaki, two of the Cook Islands – the Cook Islands is a small nation made up of 15 tiny islands in the middle of the South Pacific Ocean. It’s a geographical fact that there are few places on earth more remote. And while it’s more opinion than fact, I can’t imagine many (perhaps, any) places on the planet are more beautiful.

Yan and I love to travel and though we’ve been to so many places we’ve adored, when given the opportunity to go back to someplace we’ve already been or to go to someplace new, we almost always choose the latter. And now that Cade and Ella are old enough to appreciate the more exotic locales, we want to take them to as many new places as we can. So when Yan found $400 round trip, direct flights to the Cook Islands, we booked the trip without a second thought!

“Kia Orana” is the Maori (the language of the original Cook Islanders) greeting on the islands. Its literal translation is “May you live long.” In my conversations with the Cook Islanders I asked a lot of questions about this greeting and really dug in deep. I was told that is both a blessing and a wish. I saw Cook Islanders passing this on to everyone they met from tourists, to friends, to family. I was told it communicates the essence of the islands’ spirit and goes far beyond a simple greeting. It directly ties into the core cultural value of mana – which literally means power and influence, but constructively means so much more – which is a family’s sacred duty to collect and pass down to the next generations.

Wow. That sounds a lot like legacy to me. And it has nothing to do with material wealth. It’s all about spirit and family and values and stories and experiences. And the power of legacy lives strong in the people of the Cook Islands. It’s all about empowering families. Not necessarily political power or other forms of power over others, but rather, the power within. It’s the kind of power which connects one generation to the next and makes each successive generation stronger.

Our experience in the Cook Islands helped expose our kids to travel in general and two of the most amazing locales our world has to offer. Part of it is about introducing them to new cultures and people, different from us yet so similar on a basic human level. In the Cook Islands we met many native islanders, scores of Kiwis, some Aussies, and a smattering of Asians and Europeans. We saw almost no other Americans. Our kids played and made friends with other kids from all over the world and gained in their appreciation of the big, diverse planet they live on.

We made memories as a family in one of the earth’s truly special areas. Those memories and that shared experience have now become part of the legacy Yan and I will pass on to Cade and Ella. But what an unexpected treat to learn so much about how another amazing culture views legacy. It is proof that legacy really matters to all of us as human beings, no matter our ethnicity or national origin. That’s pretty cool.

This past weekend was a good one. We took Cade and Ella to a swim meet early Saturday morning, then dropped them off at Yan’s parents’ house. Yan and I spent the rest of the day working on renovations at an investment property we recently closed on.

Cade and Ella have protested the swim meets (This summer, Yan signed them up for the Loma Alta Park swim team which competes against other LA County park teams). They don’t mind the practices – they’ve each been taking swimming lessons since they were 2. But neither of them likes the competition. And I mean at all. Ella keeps saying to me, “racing is just not my thing.”

But we’ve pushed them (forced them, really) to stick with it and compete. Not to win, mind you… but to compete. I’ve had very earnest talks with both, “I don’t care if you come in first place or last, as long as you go out there and give it your all.” Besides, there are valuable life lessons one can only learn from losing. It’s hard to watch my kids lose – because I know they feel bad about it (and that’s part of my challenge as a father; to teach them it’s okay to feel bad about losing but that losing shouldn’t make them feel bad about themselves) – yet I also know, from experience, that losing makes you dig deep, find out what you’re made of, and decide how you’re going to respond. Are you going to pick yourself up and take another swing at it or put your tail between your legs and limp away?

Cade came in dead last in his first race and walked over to apologize to me. I said, “Wait a minute, I was just going to tell you how proud I was that you saw you were going to come in last but you didn’t quit or even slow down; you finished strong.” Cade looked down and said, “I knew I was going to lose. I always lose. It doesn’t bother me anymore.” I replied, “I think it does bother you and that’s why I’m so proud. Because even though it bothers you, you’re still out there competing. And you can hold your head up high because of that. That takes heart. I’m so proud everyone here sees the strength of heart my son has. In fact, I couldn’t be prouder.”

Life is competitive. And although most of the kids Cade (and Ella, too, for that matter) swam against were a full year older, I didn’t want him focusing on excuses. I wanted him thinking about how to improve his technique so he could improve his competitiveness. So that’s what we talked about. From the subject line, you may have guessed that I’m a big Teddy Roosevelt fan. One of my all-time favorite quotes ever comes from him: “It is not the critic who counts. … The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by the dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly … who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly; so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat.”

This is what I wish for my children.

Cade doesn’t like learning Chinese – at all. After yet another painful Saturday morning Chinese tutoring session, in a long string of painful Saturday morning Chinese tutoring sessions, everyone was fed up… Yan, me, Cade himself, and no doubt his tutor as well. Cade’s most common refrain during tutoring has been, “I can’t; it’s too hard.”

But last Saturday something changed. I’d finally had enough, I guess. Instead of coddling and cajoling, or begging and pleading, or yelling and screaming (all of which we’ve tried, repeatedly), I simply sat my son down and had a very deep, serious, heart to heart with him.

I talked to him about deciding what kind of person he wanted to be and what kind of life he wanted to have. I spoke about making a choice between being the kind of person who finds ways to achieve rather than the kind of person who finds excuses. Then I reminded him of where he comes from. The stock he’s made of. The kinds of people who’ve come before him and passed their DNA to him.

I talked specifically about his maternal grandparents who escaped a China labor camp during the cultural revolution (if you missed that blog entry you can read it here). I asked him what would have happened if they’d have said, “it’s too hard; we can’t do it.” Realizing that would have meant his mom probably would’ve never been born, and, that even if she had been, I certainly would have never met her, made him think long and hard about his own existence and the far-reaching effects of life’s decisions.

I told him, in detail, about my paternal grandparents. My grandfather was crippled for most of his life yet I never heard him complain or saw him feel sorry for himself. Not once. Nor did I ever hear him make excuses, say something was too hard, or see him give up. I only ever witnessed the opposite. In fact, apart from the constant use of crutches and having a hard time getting up and down out of a chair, he was pretty much Superman. And I’ll tell you this- there’s nothing he couldn’t build.

I then explained how my grandmother’s parents basically sold her and her little sister into what amounted to slavery when they were just little girls. I described how they used to be chained to a bed, together, each night so they wouldn’t run away, and how my grandmother’s sister couldn’t hold her bladder through the night, and how my grandmother would wet the bed too, on purpose, so she could take the blame – and the beating – which followed each morning.

I wanted him to understand the difference between Chinese (and yes, I get it, Chinese IS hard!) and the life altering, punch in the gut types of hardships life can, and does, deal out. And I wanted him to know that people in his family had faced those types of hardships, endured them, and ultimately triumphed over them. Again, when I had answered all his questions, I could see the wheels in Cade’s head spinning intensely.

And then I completely changed my tone, my approach, indeed, my parenting. I told Cade we were done saying something was too hard. I told him he was better than that and his forbearers hadn’t made it through what they had only so he could quit now. I told him he owed it to them to decide to have a “can do” attitude. I told him even more than that though, he owed it to himself. I told him I believed in him and wasn’t going to let him sell himself short a moment longer.

Something seemed to click, for both of us, there. We discovered a new, close connection with each other and it felt good. Really good. I know he wants to believe in himself. He’s just scared. I also know one of the best things I can accomplish as his father is to help that belief take hold and blossom. I see the way forward. And I’m confident he will arrive because he was hopeful enough to begin following me, knowing full well the direction I’m leading.