This is a love story that comes out of the meeting of two young people, but it doesn’t quite unfold in the way that you might think it would. Hwee Chieh grew to appreciate more deeply the strengths and weaknesses of her own family, as she came to know her partner’s family more deeply. And the insights have driven her to more deeply understand the desires of the seniors that she meets in the course of her work with Jalan Jalan.

She recalls that in her growing up years, every day after school, she and her 3 other siblings would troop over to the shophouse where both her parents were working. Her mother was a tailor, her father, a driving instructor. It became a communal place of sorts, and most importantly, she said, she got to witness them working and be a part of that process. 

“I would literally be there next to my mum, as she took measurements for her clients,” Hwee Chieh recalls. It meant that she came to appreciate her parents and how hard they worked to take care of the family, in a way that many other children did not get to (as many of their parents had work that took time away from their families).     

As she grew up, she observed that, with her partner and many of her peers, as the children started to have their own life and competing commitments, it tended to distant them from their parents, if they were not close in the first place. 

She shares how she appreciates that her partner, who grew up in a very different family environment, had to be very proactive and intentional in rebuilding connections with his father. It was not something that came naturally to them. 

Hwee Chieh says, “it is a bittersweet feeling when I take the seniors out for Jalan Jalan. I often hear them say, oh my kids have no time for me; it is lucky that we have you to bring us out.” Her heart feels for them because she feels that deep down inside, they would much rather be with their kids. But it is a wish she senses that they do not even dare articulate, for fear of being a burden on their children.   

“What we can do for them, providing that opportunity to go for an outing with friends, is really the bare minimum that we can do, but it is not meeting the true desires of their heart.” 

I asked myself, “how can we be the children we truly want to be for our parents?” 

The desire to bridge this gulf between parents and their children is what drives Hwee Chieh to go deeper in her work. And she appreciates both the magnitude of the challenge and the height of hope, through her partner’s story. 

“It is not easy especially when you’ve grown up feeling like, ‘Hey, I didn’t get what I needed from you when I was growing up; and now that I am grown up, I can just live my own life.” 

For her partner, it took the death of his mother from cancer to turn things around. He was taking care of her in her final days, and he was able to do so because his mindset became one of “You didn’t take care of me the way I needed when I was young. But you did the best you knew how. And now, I will do what I can do for you.”  

It has taken tremendous effort, and it was not an easy journey. But today, the young couple exercises on a weekly basis with his father, and it is an opportunity to spend time with him and also to help him take care of his health.     

Moving forward, she wants to move Jalan Jalan towards being a platform to bring children and their parents together. She believes that for the seniors, it is not about the places you go to, it is about who you get to go with. 

She hopes that Jalan Jalan can help people to slow down and think about this, and decide to do something about it, before it is too late. She believes that many young adults around her wish to do more to take care of their parents, beyond the obligatory weekly or monthly visit. “One day”, they say, but the day never comes. It is easy to put off, especially when the relationships are not ideal and any interaction can become a trigger for more conflict and unhappiness.  

How might Jalan Jalan be that catalyst for ‘one day’ to come? To become that platform to get beneath the prickly surface, and get to the heart of the matter- the appreciation for whatever was, and the desire to care and connect in the now.  

The concept behind Jalan Jalan is counter-cultural in a society like Singapore where busyness and productivity are valued. But it invites a pause, to bring about a new way of being with the ones we’ve grown up with.