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Home
On High
Presented to the 10th Senior Management Programme
(SMP) at the Civil Service College on the 2 May 2003 |
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'The
simplest questions are the most profound. Where were you born? Where
is your home? Where are you going? What are you doing? Think about
these once in a while, and watch your answers change.'
- Richard Bach, in Illusions, 1977 (author of Jonathan Livingston
Seagull) |
| Have
you ever asked yourself these questions? I personally think about
them a lot, and I am sure many of you do too. It is only natural.
I am happy with the answers I have got through the years though they
may be incomplete or illusive at best. What is important is that I
never stop asking these questions. They make my life a meaningful
journey. Each partially answered question is like a candle lighting
the way. When one is exhausted, another is lit and another question
asked. Though the answers are illusive, the questions are illuminating. |
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| Today, I asked
myself yet again - ‘Where is home?’ This time, my question was spurred
on by the dedication our jolly bunch of fifty-odd volunteers has for
this place they obviously call home. Come rain or shine, they will
be here for us in Sungei Buloh to guide visitors or to help facilitate
events within the reserves. What stands out most, like a feather in
the cap, is their happiness. Surely that is the mark of a home - for
home is where the heart is. And the heart is where terms of endearment
and happiness prevail. |
| Why
then Sungei Buloh? If not here, where? I sincerely believe that they
will be excellent volunteers wherever they chose to be. Their motivation
stems from a great love for Nature and the world is their oyster as
such. I liken their perception of a home as that of the migratory
birds; and their vision, high amongst the clouds, that of a world…
a better world, not just a better Sungei Buloh. |
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Perhaps at this
moment in time, my question has brought home to me a new insight that
we cannot just dream dreams of a better world, without first making
a concrete choice and commitment to serve a small dot on the global
map. In reverse, nature volunteers cannot hope to do volunteer works
right without first having a vision of a better world from a 'home
on high'.
And perhaps, for want of a better word, our true home is the realm
of being, where we can be up there yet down here. That home, though
it is not a place or space in truth, is where we want to be; to live
to the fullest of our joy just like the indomitable and free-spirited
Jonathan Livingston Seagull who said, ‘I just want to know what
I can do in the air and what I can’t, that’s all. I just want to know.’
For the joy of flying and questioning, I think I know a little better
now. Don’t you? |
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