Lady, You Can Be Free

When I live-poll youths in JCs, polys and ITEs about what is one word they associate with the future of Singapore, you know what word consistently emerges as the biggest on their word cloud?

It’s the word – “Uncertain”.

So yes, I think we have definitely succeeded in engraining in them the message of our vulnerabilities. I think they got it.

The emotion of fear while useful can become uninspiring and paralysing as a mood. Our youths are hungry for a new certainty.

And that certainty can only come from the promise of a new story, a story of a Who and Why that is bigger than the sum of our fears about What and How.

Our youths need to hear the greater story of all the things we want to do for love – not just fear. A story straight from the heart of every leader in the land about all the meaning that money can buy – not just for ourselves but for each other.

At some point, we need to discern when to stop operating in fear that the bottom will fall out of Our Singapore Story.

There is a time for fear. And there is also a time for courage
– courage born from the fire of fighting for our ideals – to simply say in the face of fear:

That’s enough.

We have enough.

We are enough.

It’s time to let more of us have enough too.

In that space of sufficiency, we shall find our satisfaction.

I do see the Finance Minister’s heart for the people. I support his openness to finding new ways forward and his courage to make hard choices.

I hope the Minister and the government can work together with a new generation, idealists and pragmatists alike, to help them dream of a better future that they would be proud to call their own.
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Snippets from Shiao-yin Kuik Budget 2018 speech “The True Cost of Living” – 

Here’s my favorite speech from her during the last Budget.