Cushi Ming on family
What is family?
A family is a commitment. A commitment to nurture, cherish, educate, learn from, support, and rely on each other. A commitment founded on faith, hope, and love. A family is also the moments created within that commitment. The family is not defined by the people themselves, but rather the relationship they co-create together.
How do you demonstrate love in your family?
- Level 1: Subconscious love through fulfilling “responsibility” as a parent – so, getting her ready for school, cooking for her, reading to her, playing with her.
- Level 2: Conscious love – Intentional expression of love through hugging her often, kissing her over 1,000 times a day, telling her I love her. On the days that she’s with her mom, I go to visit her at school every day for lunch, lay next to her cot and stay until she falls asleep for her nap. Even at two years old, I still put her to sleep on my chest every night.
- Level 3: Looking within oneself – Between birth and seven years old, we learn most of what we know from those around us. My commitment to Yamaya is to create better habits and demonstrate a healthy belief system. This also pays off in my own life.
What role does family play in children’s education and development?
Education is something I often challenge, in its traditional self. Self-discovery is the most important form of education, because it’s the one that truly cannot be taught, it can only be experienced. Self-discovery, if done well, creates a mentality that allows for the creation of any possibility one can conjure.
What have you learned about building healthy relationships?
That it’s a commitment on both ends. Healthy relationships are not easy to build. The commitment to growth and each other has to be at centreof it, if not, it’s easy to get distracted and allow one’s personal wants for immediate or short-term satisfaction to outweigh the possibility of creating something more beautiful together over time.
Thoughts on work-life balance?
I just make sure that I spend time with Yamaya. I work a lot, as an entrepreneur; it’s quite normal to have days that are full of meetings and nights of actually getting work done, and if I think too much about that, time feels scarce, and I get discouraged. Instead, I prefer to believe that things will work out as long as I put attention towards the things that mean most to me.
What can we use more of to build successful families in Bermuda?
This kind of thing is exactly what we need. We need the examples to be easy to find, easy to access, and easy to engage and learn from. Social media has proven to be so inspirational to so many people. I also make myself available to talk with other fathers and just people, in general, to share what I’ve learned along my journey.
Connect with Cushi @cushiming
