Hi everyone,
it's a pleasure to have this chance to speak to you.
Many people's impression of Lai Pei-Hsia
is the me over tens of years ago.
About 30 years ago,
I hosted a variety show, where
I sang two songs every night.
It's normal for you younger not to know me.
Just go ask your parents.
Many people of the generation of your parents know me as a singer of that time,
so when they see me, they say
Lai Pei-Hsia, I loved listening to your songs!
And I would say thank you.
Many people don't know what I did in the last decades.
I'm glad to have this chance to share with you at TEDxTaipei.
So what did I do in the past years?
I've been striving to find my way home.
In the past 30 years, I've been on the road to soul
and I found family awakening is an important idea,
which I want to share the idea with you today.
No matter how difficult your journey to home is,
you have no other choice.
Why?
Because you are yearning for a brilliant life.
Why?
I'll tell you in the following story.
Love and compassion.
How do we find a life of love and compassion?
It's not easy.
But it's easy to find a life without love and compassion.
When there are no love and compassion in our lives,
we know we've taken the wrong road.
What to do? How to come back? Who can teach us?
Those who knows about psychology
must be familiar with this figure.
It shows the Iceberg Theory.
What is this theory about?
Sigmund Freud, Virginia Satir and even writer Ernest Hemingway
all mentioned Iceberg Theory.
The theory holds that as with an iceberg,
only a small proportion of many things is clearly shown on the top.
We only see the evident good part we want to see.
However, usually in intimate relationships,
your hidden part will come up
because your mate knows well how to touch the tender spot of you.
They do it on purpose. "You made me angry,
so I return it double back
by all means. You said you're good?
Let's see."
So a relationship becomes a competition easily,
especially in an intimate one.
We have a lot of young friends here.
I hope that after listening to my sharing,
you can try to understand
that maybe there is a part of you that you never know before.
You might not know that you're that stingy,
that narrow-minded, even that mean.
I didn't believe either at first. Until I went into my first marriage,
I started to realize how mean Lai Pei-Hsia was.
When I found the evil me,
I started to reflect on my past, making sense of what had happened on me.
So in the past 30 years, as I just said,
I realized that finding the way home is the first step of awakening.
Many asked me,
Lai Pei-Hsia, were you practicing or teaching yoga?
I said no.
In fact, I was trying to find my way home.
And I did. I found my way home. I found love and compassion.
So I share with people a lot about
how and how good it is to go home.
At home, we usually can find two options:
to be the right one, or to be the peaceful one.
Why?
Because too often people fight to prove that they are on the right side.
They insist on their own opinion at the price of peace.
In fact, both are hurt in the fight.
Everyone developed their own method to prove they are right.
The desire to prove self right has many reasons.
First, the rise of adrenaline.
When I try to prove I'm right, I feel upset and the adrenaline in my veins rises.
You can find some people often argue, like my husband is a case in point,
that they really do not like to fight.
But he let loose his horse of anger immediately the moment he finds injustice.
So I told him that
do you know what is "I don't like fights"?
It's not telling others angrily that how much you hate anger,
and that you don't like to fight.
"I don't like fights" means to be in the peace.
After years of learning, I realized the rise of adrenaline is an addict,
like alcohol and cigarettes.
Strangely you can often find people
become furious over trivial things.
Now you know the reason.
It's because of adrenaline.
Another reason for fights,
is the values we get from our family of origin.
Often we fight because we believe
our values are right.
But to think deeper,
actually there is no right and wrong when it comes to family values.
This is a point I want to stress on.
If there is a family where all the member are polices
except for one burglar. Who is the betrayer?
Who is the betrayer of the family?
The answer is obvious.
A police family with one burglar.
The burglar is the betrayer.
And here's another situation.
If there is a family where all the member are burglars
except for one police. Who is the betrayer?
So it's not about right and wrong.
It's about a family system.
Many couples fight over
the values they separately get from their family of origin.
This made me suffer agonies in my first marriage.
Because my mother had a strong temper.
She fought over the things she held right.
So in my first marriage,
I did as I was taught. I loved my mother very much.
So I listened to everything she said.
She said I should never talk behind others' back.
I did.
She said you should tell him directly.
I did.
So in my first marriage,
when I saw my parents-in-law
doing things I couldn't identify with,
I did what my mom taught me.
I told them in their face.
Wow, the result was terrible.
I knew nothing!
I just did as taught.
I loved my mom and I did what she said.
What I did includes one thing,
which a lot of parents also tell their children,
"I scold you because I love you."
Have you ever heard of it? Yes?
Have you ever said it before?
The words are dangerous because
the children do believe what they hear. They believe scolding is love.
So when they grow up, loving their parents,
they show their love as how they were taught.
So I see a lot people saying they love and respect their parents.
But when it comes to the moments of right and wrong,
they talk in the same way
as their parents taught them.
This deserves further thoughts.
I love my mom.
I used to believe whatever she said.
However, not until I know more about soul- searching
that it became clear to me
that scolding and blaming are the biggest killers of marriage.
So we should start to think about and picture our own happy future.
Should we copy everything our parents did?
We all know that our parents have their own unique experience and background.
But you young generation are awesome.
You are unlimited.
In your fighting parents' time,
they didn't have my lectures,
either did they have access to so many books about love.
But you can create a totally different life for yourselves.
A totally different happiness.
The following story isn't all about me
but more about my parents.
Many people here may not have children.
But I believe everyone has parents.
Right? Yes.
We all agree on that. Parents are all different.
Every parents got their own unique background.
But we all got only one way home.
That is,
maybe some people have a hard time getting home.
I know not all parents in the world are lovable.
But if your parents are not lovable as you want them to be,
I can only say you face a harder challenge.
But still, you got only one way home
and no one can walk through the difficult journey for you.
This is my father and my mother.
My father flied here this morning to support me.
When you turned back and saw him,
you must be thinking how come he became like this?
Can you stand up please?
That's my...Yeah, that's him. 50 years ago.
What I wanted to share with you is that
my mom was a single mother.
It was a long time ago. About 50 years ago,
because of the Vietnam War,
my dad had to fight there.
So my mom wasn't sure about where my dad gonna be in the end.
In wartimes,
things were unpredictable.
My mom was pregnant,
and she decided to give birth to me.
But my dad went back to the U.S.
So we were separated for years.
My mom was sorrowful.
When our parents, especially our mothers,
who children often feel close to,
are not happy,
we thoughtful children know and carry the sorrow.
We may fight with others outside
in order to find a outlet of the sorrow.
But for many children like me,
who only have their mother and no siblings to fight with,
who dare not to tell their mother they are hurt
because they don't want to sadden their mother,
they endure everything.
Here's an important question
for you to think about.
If your mother was sorrowful,
how dare you be happy?
Think carefully about it.
Many people say
"I want happiness."
It's difficult because you dare not to face the betrayal.
If your mother was lonely, sad, sorrowful,
how dare you be happy?
This is what I've been thinking carefully on my road home.
I attributed every problem
to one cause. Because I didn't have my dad with me.
Everything would be different if he's with me.
So I wasn't confident.
I attributed every problem to my dad
until my first marriage.
My first marriage was...
In retrospect, I feel embarrassed.
To think, two people both from a single-parent family
longed for happiness.
But how could they create a happy family?
They didn't have an example to follow.
Unless they awake, find the core of the problem,
and start to reflect, they could never find happiness.
Why? They didn't have their parents as role models.
They even looked around but didn't find any.
Children in wealthy families may have more chance seeing their parents fight
because money is another element that causes family problems.
When I was in the marriage,
I saw the hidden part of me below the surface.
A huge part of me which I didn't know.
I said really bad things when I was angry
because I thought I was representing justice.
So the attitude of being right
made me to think about
what is right exactly?
I left the staggering marriage
and looked back on myself and tried to find the core of the problem.
I started to learn to love myself.
What is to love myself?
It wasn't easy at first.
But I have good teachers,
my children.
I think many parents can understand this.
How to love myself? I didn't know.
But one day, when I was at a loss
about how to manage my marriage.
I thought,
what if it is my children facing this situation,
what should I do?
Instead of telling them how to do it,
it's better for me to show them.
So from then on, gradually I understand
how to love myself because I love my children.
Always remember to love yourself.
This is my parents in law.
They've been in a loving marriage for 72 years.
So,
after I met my current husband,
seeing their loving relationship
I started to know what "loving myself" is all about.
This is my husband.
He's the person who loves himself the most I've ever seen in the world.
Why?
He didn't gain any weight after his military service until aged 65 now.
Please stand up for us to look at you.
He exercises everyday and for diet,
he chooses carefully.
He eats nothing unhealthy.
Why? Because he loves his parents.
He knows that his body is derived from his parents and he must not wound it.
He truly loves and respects his parents,
and knows how much they did for him,
how hard they made him the person he is now,
so he cherishes himself very much.
From him, I learned to love myself.
In our intimate relationship,
we let go of winning and losing.
Whenever we fight,
I would just tell him: okay, you win.
Then he will shut up.
This is very useful.
Because I know clearly that I don't want to win.
I want peace.
So in the relationship,
we both learn the importance of peace.
and in our peace,
we create two happy children.
Would you please stand up?
I'm so proud of you guys.
This is also the reason why I have to love myself.
An unhappy mother cannot rear happy children.
It's impossible. They need role models.
Children need to know what happiness is.
Money cannot teach them happiness.
Children really need to role models. They need to see happy people.
But there are many wealthy people but few truly happy men.
Everyone here is a pioneer.
You won't be here if you are not.
You have to make yourself happy first.
Only happy people can create a happy world.
Unhappy people only can create an unhappy world.
This photo was taken in my mother's last week.
She died of cancer.
In her last moments, she told me,
"I want you to take good care of yourself."
And I promised her.
I promised to take good care of her beloved daughter.
So I have no other choice.
I must love myself.
When my mom...
Being grateful is the source of all powers.
At the very moments before her death,
my mom called all the friends she deeply loved
and told them thank you. I love you. Thank you for making my wonderful life.
I painted this after my mom's death.
I often enter my mom's world when painting.
In that soul world,
there's no distance between my mom and me.
We are together.
Even now I can feel her guide.
I love Lai Pei-Hsia. I've been on my way home for over 30 years.
I don't know about you. But of course I hope you love me.
But that's not the point.
The point is that I hope you can all back on your way home.
Maybe yours can be more difficult.
But you got no other choice.
Only when we make peace with our parents
can we really like ourselves.
No one like people who don't respect his/her parents.
It doesn't matter if your parents are venders,
your mother is a mistress and you are an illegitimate child,
or your parents are in jail.
You have no other choice.
You have to go back and thank them. Give them a fair judge.
What's a fair judge?
Because I, Lai Pei-Hsia, can't be here today
without three elements.
My dad, my mom and God's divine arrangement.
When I start to love myself,
I love all these three elements.
So Lai Pei-Hsia would like to wish you
start your journey home early and love yourself.
Thank you.