A Great Man is Someone With ......

The pain of writing,
Like a mother in labour,
Proud delivery.

This is the haiku I had written to share with my students that I understood the pain they had to go through during every journal or essay writing. At that time, I could only think of the most excruciating pain to be that of a mother's labour in child birth. If my students persevered, they would be like mothers proud of their babies! In this case, it would be their completed script.

Hence, you can imagine my shock when I read of a father throwing his 10month old baby into a gigantic wok of boiling water in Changhua county, Taiwan. The doctor who attended to the baby described the baby's pain as "being slashed by a thousand knives", and almost ten times worse than labour pains!!

How excruciatingly painful, poor baby! I cried when I read the news! An innocent little baby who had to suffer because of her father's hot temper and drunken stupor! A baby's skin is always so soft and delicate and how could it withstand a wok of boiling water! Neighbours said that the baby's parents were often seen fighting, especially after the father had too much to drink. One of them said, "He's really a cold-blooded animal. This kind of father just ought to be shot!" I think being shot is too easy a way out for him. He ought to be thrown into a gigantic wok of boiling water!

In a fit of anger, monster dads and bullying spouses could do almost anything. It is no wonder that my pastor had once mentioned in his sermon, "If a man could control his lust and his hot temper, he is indeed a great man!"

Gan Chau