Be Happy, Always. Xandria Ooi

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      We didn’t see it coming, especially my brother. My parents had had a wonderful relationship when we were growing up, and we had always been a close-knit family. It wasn’t a case of pretending that everything was smooth on the surface while things were falling apart. My parents were genuine partners in every aspect of life, raising us as a team and even running a catering business and a bookshop together for more than two decades.

      Yet, when we thought about it, we could see that it wasn’t out of the blue. After my dad had decided to sell his business and retire, he started to be discontented with life. Perhaps he felt a loss of a sense of identity, and it became harder for him to feel fulfilled and significant without a clear purpose. My mom had a career, and my brother and I were grown and didn’t need him like we had when we were younger.

      It had been hard for my dad to be happy. So although his affair took us by surprise, it wasn’t completely surprising.

      The night my dad made his announcement, I told my friend I couldn’t make it to her wedding after all. Instead of driving to the airport, I went to my parents’ house. Emotions were running high, and there certainly were a lot of tears, but it wasn’t frantic or loud. We were talking openly and trying to process and understand what had happened and why. My dad earnestly told us that the reason he hadn’t told the family sooner was because he wasn’t sure if the relationship with the other woman would work out long term.

      My brother Sean, who was twenty at the time, was still attending university. It was the most upset—and probably most expressive—I’ve ever seen him. He didn’t shout or raise his voice, but with a quiet rage he told my dad, “You punished me for telling a lie when I was young. You made me promise not to lie ever again. And now…you do this.”

      By this, my brother meant my dad hiding his intentions about his trip overseas, pretending it was for business, yet all the while making arrangements to meet a woman whom he had been courting over the internet. We were all blindsided by my father’s affair, but in a way, I think it was my brother who felt the most betrayed.

      Clearly, my dad had done something that had a chain-reaction effect on the rest of his family, but I don’t think he comprehended how he had just upended my brother’s world.

      I was older, and in the last few years before his affair, my mother and I had had many conversations with my dad about happiness, mindset, and gratitude in hopes of lifting him up from his discontentment. So in a way, it was easier for me to see my dad as a person, separate from his role as a father.

      But for my brother had always viewed by dad as a father—strong and always right. And so for him, the very foundation on which his world rested was suddenly no longer solid. When you feel like your father has betrayed you, your world changes. I think my brother lost the last of the innocence that kids have about the world being black and white. He grew up overnight.

      At times like these, families can fall apart and there can be a great deal of anger and blame. However, this didn’t happen for one single reason—my mom. Where my dad shocked us with his news, my mom blew us away with her grace.

      My mom responded to the entire divorce in a way that made us respect her on a whole new level. Some of us lose our minds when we get upset and lose sight of what’s important to us—but not my mom. She was definitely hurt and upset, but she wasn’t angry or vindictive. She never once thought my dad was a terrible person for what he’d done. For my mom, what my dad did was painful, but she believed that only she could choose whether or not to suffer. To her, being angry would be to suffer, and she didn’t want that. Her priority was her happiness and the happiness of her children—not what my dad did or didn’t do.

      We’d known our mom to be kind and extremely wise from the way she raised us. People usually show us who they are when they have to go through a difficult time, and through our parents’ divorce, we kept seeing evidence of our mom’s kindness and wisdom.

      When my dad was in the process of moving out from our house, my mom helped him pack. My dad wanted more time, but my mom was very firm about him moving out within a week, and she saw that the process would go more quickly if she helped with the packing.

      My brother and I watched with complete fascination—and a little dismay—as she packed my dad’s clothes neatly into boxes, even going so far as to label them. My brother objected to my dad taking anything other than his clothes, but unbeknownst to us at the time, my mom had given my dad a set of kitchen utensils and cutleries for his new place. It wasn’t just one plate and a spoon, fork, and knife—it was a set of six!—because, “What if he had guests over?” Our jaws dropped when she told us this years later.

      “Even in the movies you don’t see people doing that!” my brother exclaimed. At the time, we both protested that my mom was being too nice to my dad. “People usually just throw everything into garbage bags and dump them outside!” I pointed out, exasperated.

      It was as if we had to remind my mom that she was the victim here!

      And then it really hit me—why would we want my mom to think that she was a victim, when she didn’t see herself as one?

      It does not take strength to hate someone, it takes strength to be kind to them even when they have done you a bad turn. My mom wasn’t forcing herself to be nice or kind, she has always been a nice and kind person—while my mom certainly didn’t think that my dad respected her in his actions, she respected herself enough not to behave in a way that was beneath her standards. Just because someone had been unkind did not mean she had to also be unkind. My mom saw no reason to let a negative experience change her for the worse.

      Through the entire divorce process, my mom wasn’t controlling or suppressing her emotions. She felt all sorts of emotions, but she did the same thing she had been practicing all her life whenever she was upset—she let go of the feeling. Ever since I can remember, my mom has always been someone who believes that anger solves nothing and creates more suffering. My dad may have left, but my mom did not let that change her for the worse or make her bitter.

      Often, when marriages end and one parent blames the other, it makes it very difficult for the kids to be happy because they feel like they have to be just as angry as a show of support to the injured party. But because of the classy and graceful way my mom handled my dad’s affair and the divorce, my brother and I didn’t see it as something negative or bad.

      In fact, it was incredibly inspiring to bear witness to how my mother handled this difficult time in her life. She had always taught me to be happy, but through her own actions, I could actually see what non-suffering meant. From the very beginning, my mom accepted the reality of what was happening without going down the path of “How could you?!” or “Why me?” In the absence of blame or self-pity, my mom suffered very little, if at all.

      My mom has shown me what it truly means to be a strong person.

      People can always cause us pain, but we truly can choose not to suffer. We can value our happiness so much that even when people hurt us, we don’t have to give our happiness away.

      We Can Always Choose, but Never Control, Our Happiness

      <Acceptance>

      Most of us know that happiness goes beyond a feeling—that happiness is a choice. However, sometimes we just don’t feel good despite wanting to make the choice to be happy. Sometimes we wake up feeling depressed or anxious, and the knowledge that happiness is a choice can make us feel even more depressed because we feel that we have failed in some way. We feel even more frustrated at our inability to make the choice to be happy.

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