Minor Issues: A loving letter to my 18-year-old son about life and skills

I write this to you as you turn 18 next week.

How time has flown. It feels like yesterday that you arrived via a natural, drug-free birth.

Unlike your elder brother, R, you were very much planned. R was conceived by accident in Germany, at a time when your mum and I were still planning for a life without kids.

After R came, our family life changed course. We took the decision to have you, so that R would not grow up as a lonely only child.

In the same way you were planned, you have always been a planner. Since you were little, you have been making plans for your future.

When it came to walking, your brother would take his early steps with little concern about falling and hurting himself. We had to rubberise the flooring of our home because he was lurching around, falling and bumping his head so often.

Your approach to walking was different. You studied how your brother walked, patiently working on building up the strength in your leg muscles with mini squats while holding onto the side of your crib.

You took your first steps only after you knew that you had what it took to walk without falling. You have never looked back since.

You take it upon yourself to plan how to care for the family and those around you. You often prioritise family time over going out with your friends.

You are the default home workout buddy for anyone who wants to exercise. In addition, you often go out of your way to make sure that no one has meals alone at home.

Despite being almost 18, you regularly dole out hugs, kisses and physical affection to us, especially when you sense that someone is having a bad day. More On This Topic Minor Issues: When things go wrong on a family trip, have a sense of perspective Minor Issues: Don't let your smartphone sabotage your relationships with loved ones

You are still happy to hold your mother's hand when we go out as a family, something that we thought you would stop doing years ago.

The planner in you causes you to take stock regularly.

You are never happy until everyone in the family returns home after school or work.

When family members travel, you constantly worry about their well-being and safety, dreading that something might happen to them while they are on the road.

I cannot imagine how quiet life would be without you.

Even while you were in the womb, you made your presence known. As our unborn child, the easiest way to get a response from you was to turn up the music and let you kick in accompaniment to the beat.

From your first screams as a baby, you have always been noisy, humming to yourself, drumming your fingers and making small joyful noises.

Your teachers would sometimes remark about you humming to yourself during class or moving around. We tried to explain that this was a natural response to the tunes playing in your mind. And we did not see anything wrong with it, if you could do it softly, while still paying attention in class.

It is not surprising that, years later, you would develop a passion for music.

You love your five instruments (acoustic guitar, electric guitar, bass, keyboard and violin) dearly and work to coax soulful and melodic tunes from each. You would digitise the output so that you could weave it into musical compositions on your Mac.

Our Housing Board flat is bursting with your instruments, cables and microphone stands. We had to turn down your request for a saxophone and drum set because we just don't have enough space, much as we would like to support your passion.

At 18, you are facing your last set of major examinations before university.

In the last few months, you have become more sombre, almost as if you have absorbed the ennui of the times: the war in Ukraine, technological change resulting from artificial intelligence, and an increasingly uncertain job environment.

You have read the headlines in the newspapers and have concluded that you are coming of age at a very difficult time in the world.

You have started worrying about your future, comparing your achievements with your friends'. Some of them have represented Singapore at international competitions, others are taking advanced classes for school subjects.

You do not say it, but you worry about how you stack up against your peers when it comes to university. There is a nagging worry about what else you should be doing to strengthen your university application, especially your admissions essay.

I want you to know that I am perfectly fine if you do not attend university, as long as you keep learning.

You have proven to me that you already know how to learn, and I see that as one of your defining attributes. More On This Topic Minor Issues: My son failed maths, but got an A for effort Minor Issues: How our family tries to keep smartphone addiction at bay

You had hardly any music instruction over your 18 years. Only a few months of keyboard lessons and two years of violin lessons, at your request. You are mostly self-taught, with the help of YouTube and other online resources, supplemented by hours of practice.

You are an online course junkie, having done programmes on quantum computing, advanced programming and social psychology. At 18, the ocean of the world's knowledge is open to you, and you are a sponge.

Daniel Boorstin, a notable American historian, said that "the greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge".

The same can be said about skills. Watching a YouTube video is not developing a skill. It creates the illusion of skill acquisition.

I especially like that the planner in you compels you to take stock of your skills. You are not satisfied to watch an online video, which represents head knowledge, but insist on applying what you have learnt, to test the skill that you have.

Comparing your skills and achievements with others is vanity. Instead, seek to improve yourself by 1 per cent each day. Acquire 1 per cent more knowledge. Be 1 per cent better at the skills you are developing.

While the progress from day to day is imperceptible, over a whole year, you will see a quantum leap of competency.

For me, this concept is summarised in the Latin term gradatim ferociter, which means to move forward step by step, ferociously.

The Latin phrase has also been adopted by Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, as the motto for his space company, Blue Origin, which develops technology to explore the great unknown of outer space.

According to Mr Bezos, "you have to put one foot in front of the other, things take time, there are no shortcuts, but you want to do those steps with passion and ferocity".

In the same way, if you keep making progress ferociously, I am not worried that you will have no job and be kicked out of work by artificial intelligence or yet-unknown technologies.

Nothing would make me happier than to know that you have achieved mastery in the skills you desire, while staying open to new skills that emerge.

I have never been more optimistic about the future. I believe that we are moving into a skills-based world where the jobs of the future will depend on skills, not whether you have a formal degree or not. People with deep skills that can be applied to novel areas in demand by the market will never have to worry about their rice bowls.

If you apply the same appetite to learning as you have with your instruments, you will be fine. You will find your place in this rapidly changing world.

I am proud of you, son. Being your father has made me a better person as you inspire me to keep learning, even as middle-age inertia sets in for me.

Trust yourself and your skills, son. Do not worry. Gradatim ferociter.

Love you always,

Pa.

Abel Ang is an adjunct professor at Nanyang Business School

Source : The Straits Times