As my son navigates a broader and broader world, I'm also turning my perspective inwards and wondering how I subconsciously or consciously manage similar situations that he is going through. One recurring theme since he started grade one is fear of rejection, or desire for approval.

The Taiwanese public school system seems to be quite diverse in that each teacher has a lot of say in how material is taught and what kind of learning environment to foster. My son's teacher, though not entirely of an older guard, does drill her students with memorization exercises in Mandarin characters. Weekly dictation quizzes are useful to help strengthen recall, but for every character a student messes up, they are expected to rewrite the entire phrase of sometimes three or four additional characters two more times. In my opinion, it illustrates how learning can so easily be twisted such that a young student sees it as punishment. And my son has already made that connection: getting something wrong means you're going to be punished. And he's learned to fear doing something "wrong," especially when defined by somebody else. He's worried that getting a low score on his quiz will make his teacher not like him anymore, or means that he's a bad student.

While I can sit here and be appalled at this kind of teaching method, I've found that it's only one example of what makes society run the way it does. This fear hasn't really gone away as I've aged. In my life, it's only gotten more nuanced, hidden amid my relationships in those unspoken social contracts and expectations of each other. For others, it is completely out in the open, with members of society having their mistakes and failings plastered all over the media and targeted for open ridicule or physical hostility. It's human to find comfort in acceptance and approval. It's human to be afraid that anything we do, could be turned into punishment and pain. So how do I embody what I hope to show my son, which is to live without that fear?