“Believe me I know what an incredible opportunity this is for you… I know we agreed this was the plan.
You wanna do something great, Jack?
Flush the plan. The plan has the both of us in it and I choose us.
The plan doesn’t make us great, but we have Together and that’s what makes it great.”
– Kate, in the movie “Family Man” at the airport
January 1, 2013. This day on this year, I might have been halfway across the world, living a completely different life riding on a vastly different perspective, doing something starkly different.
Had I taken the other route, we might never have married.
As we watched “Family Man” yesterday, a movie you had rented for us to enjoy together at home, memories, tears and a sense of wild relief and immense deja vu flooded through me.
The film, released in year 2000, centers on Jack, a wildly successful business executive on Wall Street, who sees what could have been, had he made a different decision 13 years ago. At that critical moment in the airport when he decided to leave the person he had loved the most to do an internship at Barclays in London, Kate, his then girlfriend knew they might never see each other again if he decided to go.
It was uncannily similar to what happened in February last year. I got accepted to John Hopkins University to pursue a Masters in public health. There were 4 days left to confirming my place. Then you came in the picture, God said to hold on, and after deep prayer, long talks and profound struggle, I decided to stay back to marry you, instead.
Then, I barely even knew you. You had been in Singapore for all but three months.
I was that close to walking along a completely different path. I could have been there, now.
But I made the best decision in my life. And I cannot describe how insanely grateful I am for being here, for choosing the Other path, for choosing Us.
Funny, because we are now exploring opportunities to pursue further studies again- but Together. Above all, we choose Us. Above wealth, status, and things the eye can see.
In a climax scene where the protagonist high-flying Jack is flung back to his other “what-if” life with his probono lawyer wife, two children and a regular day job helping his father-in-law at a tyre company, instead of being the President at the largest firm on Wall Street, he suddenly shouts in exasperation at his wife, Kate, “Don’t you ever, for once, dreamt you had it all? Don’t you wish you had what other people envy?!”
To which she only replied, “But we do, honey. People already do envy us.”
Everyone is making New Year resolutions today. I have none. Living each day deliberately, consciously of God and what He has blessed me with through this life, through you, through the people around me, is resolution enough to live life fully.
Last week in Hong Kong as we hiked up a hill, I saw an angel’s wing above you, as if reminding me of the divine favour God has upon your life. Then I realized, how blessed I have been to have you enter my life, how incredibly fulfilling, nourishing and life-changing 2012 has been and how adventurous and exciting 2013 will be. In 2013, I hope to learn more, grow more, forgive more, love more.
I have no regrets. I choose Us, I choose our calling, I choose the dream that God placed in our hearts to love and to help, to reach out and pull in.
And I know God does too.
You at Lamma Island