Head Over Heart

Our senior writer finds that his pragmatic side has grown to rival his emotional side as he gets older.

- Jeremy Chua

BECOMING independent was one of the most important life lessons I’ve learnt.

My childhood memories are filled with numerous instances of my mum saying that I needed to learn to do everything on my own as soon as possible.

Like many parents, she did not want me to rely on her or anyone else to do things that I should be doing myself, such as chores and errands. 

She also stressed the importance of making my own (hopefully correct) decisions and sticking to them.

Naturally, this led to numerous arguments (many of which were quite trivial) during my teenage years. On the one hand, I was supposed to make my own decisions, but on the other hand, she is still my mum and I was living under her roof.

Along with becoming independent, I learnt to be pragmatic, too. I’ve always tried to adopt the most sensible approaches with everything I do.

But I threw my pragmatism out the window when I ventured into the world of automotive journalism m. I had not only joined a niche industry (print), but a dying one, too.