A story about the love I misunderstood, and the truth I only saw years later.

The Things I Misread, The Love I Almost Missed

I had just returned from China at 2 a.m. It felt like November disappeared in a blink. I am not the kind of person who enjoys killing time. Unless I am on a flight, completely mentally exhausted, with no internet and no capacity left to think, I do not play games just to let time pass.

Time, to me, is not something to kill. It is something to honour.

The faster it moves, the more uneasy I feel. Not because I have nothing to do, but because I have too many things that matter. My kids are growing faster than my heart can accept. My parents are aging while I am busy. My wife and I are in a season that is challenging, but real, and I actually love this part of life because it is honest, not fantasy.

So when a month burns away so quickly, it scares me. It feels like pieces of my life, my fatherhood, my marriage, my sonship, are quietly slipping away.

Right in the middle of this rush, in a small lunch in Shantou over goose meat and goose liver, I saw something clearly. A mother’s quiet sacrifice. A child’s innocent misunderstanding. And the way love gets misread not just in families, but in leadership, in organisations, and across cultures.

Throughline: Love often hides in plain sight, and if we do not learn to interpret it, we end up misreading the very people who love us most.

Goose Meat, Goose Liver, And The Boy Who Did Not Know

During our final lunch in Shantou, the 23 year old son of our friend joined us. We shared goose meat and goose liver, something I rarely get to eat in Malaysia. The atmosphere was warm. The stories started flowing, especially about his childhood and his relationship with his mother.

He told us how the whole family always ate beef when he was growing up. Beef is famous in Shantou, so naturally everyone treated it as the family favourite. For more than 20 years, he simply assumed his mother loved beef too.

Then one day, he bought goose meat home because his girlfriend loved it. His mother’s eyes lit up. She told him that this had always been her favourite. She had loved goose meat for years, but nobody knew.

He felt really guilty. How could he love his mother so much, and yet miss something so simple for so long?

I told him not to feel guilty. 天下的妈妈都是一样的. Mothers all over the world are very similar. They endure, they sacrifice, and they rarely talk about what they give up.

His story made me laugh, then it touched something deeper in me, because I realised I had my own version of this.

Chicken Bone With Love

When I was a child, my mother always gave me the meat from the chicken drumstick. She would eat the bone. I saw my dogs at home chewing bones happily, so in my childish logic I concluded that my mother must really love eating bones.

As a naive boy, I even teased her for eating like a dog. She never scolded me. She did not sit me down to explain the meaning behind her actions. She just smiled and let me say the silly things kids say.

In my mind, because I loved her, I tried to be generous. I would quickly eat the meat, then pass her the bone as a gift. To me, that was honouring her, that was my way of being filial.

One day, an uncle visited. He watched me eat the meat and hand my mother the bone. He was shocked. He scolded me for being unfilial and told me I should give my mother the meat, not just the bone.

I defended myself firmly. I told him he did not understand, because my mother loved bones. After all, she always ate the bone and gave me the meat. My mother and her friend burst out laughing. They laughed at how serious I was, how innocent I was.

I felt confused and a little offended. As far as I knew, I had been giving my mother what she liked.

Only years later did I realise the truth. She did not eat the bone because she enjoyed it. She ate the bone because she wanted me to have the best. She took the leftovers for herself. Her love had always been there, I just misread it.

Now that I am a parent, that memory cuts much deeper.

How Children Misread Love, And How Adults Repeat The Pattern

This “chicken bone” story is more than just a funny childhood memory. It reveals something about how children, and even adults, interpret love.

Children misread love more than we realise.

Psychologists, and honestly just common sense, will tell you this. Children interpret repeated behaviour as preference, not sacrifice. If they see a parent do something over and over again, they think, “Daddy likes this,” not, “Daddy is doing this for me.”

So when a child sees a parent cooking late, sending them to tuition, working weekends, or always giving up the best food, they do not have the emotional vocabulary to say, “This is sacrificial love.” They simply assume, “This is how things are,” or “This is what my parent enjoys.”

That was me with the chicken bone. I thought my mother liked bones. I never saw that she was giving me the meat that she herself might have enjoyed. For me, this misunderstanding lasted more than ten years. For many people, it lasts fifteen to twenty five years.

There is a pattern there.

Most people truly see the depth of their parents’ sacrifices only when they become parents themselves. That is what I call the 20 year discovery pattern. You grow up, move out, start paying bills, carry responsibility, and suddenly you realise, “This is what my parents did all along.”

It is the same love. The same sacrifice. But your eyes were too young to see it. Life had to mature your vision.

Now, as a father, I hear my own children say things like,

“Daddy likes to work.”

“Daddy never rests.”

“Daddy enjoys doing hard things.”

From their perspective, they only see repetition. They see me work often. They see me tired, but still going. They see me choosing responsibility over comfort. Since they cannot separate preference from responsibility, they conclude I must like working.

They misread duty as desire, burden as enjoyment, sacrifice as personality.

That is their version of my chicken bone story.

If I never explain what is happening, they will grow up thinking that love equals endless giving without language. That being a father means you must drain yourself and pretend you enjoy it. That being a mother means always eating bones while the children eat meat.

Across cultures, this misunderstanding repeats itself with different food and different symbols.

In China, the mother eats the chicken bone.

In Malaysia, the parents take the smallest prawn.

In Japan, parents finish the pickled radish bottoms.

In India, a parent eats the burnt roti so the rest can have the good ones.

Different plates, same love. Different dishes, same pattern.

The serious part is this. When sacrifice is repeated but never explained, the next generation receives the benefit but not the understanding. They enjoy the meat, but never learn the meaning.

Then they grow up, become leaders, become spouses, become parents, and repeat the same pattern. They keep giving until they are empty. They feel guilty when anyone does something for them. They do not know how to receive kindness without discomfort.

In leadership, this becomes dangerous.

A leader who only gives and never receives creates a culture where everyone feels guilty for resting or asking for help. People begin to think that the only way to prove commitment is to burn out. The quiet message becomes, “If you are tired, do not show it. Just eat the bone and pretend you like it.”

That is not sustainable for families, for schools, for any organisation.

So this simple chicken bone memory forces me to ask:

Do I want my children to inherit sacrifice without understanding?

Do I want my team to learn effort without boundaries?

Do I want love to be felt, but never understood?

If the answer is no, then something has to change in how I give, and how I allow myself to receive.

How To Love, Lead, And Receive Differently

I am not sharing this as someone who has figured it out. I am sharing as someone who still makes mistakes, still reacts under stress, and still needs reminders. But there are three commitments I am choosing from this reflection.

1. I choose to be a cheerful giver and an excellent receiver.

I still believe in giving. I still believe in sacrifice. I still believe in working hard. That is part of who I am.

But I no longer want to be the person who only gives and feels guilty receiving. If my children see me always give, but never allow anyone to care for me, they will learn that receiving love is wrong or selfish. They will repeat the same pattern with their families one day.

So I want them to see me say thank you when they do small things for me. To see me enjoy rest without guilt. To watch me accept help, not as weakness, but as a normal part of being human.

Then maybe they will grow up able to love others without burning out and able to receive love without shame.

2. I choose to explain my heart, not just show my actions.

Actions speak loudly, but sometimes they speak in a language children cannot yet understand.

So I am learning to tell my kids,

“Daddy is tired today.”

“Daddy is working hard not because he likes suffering, but because he wants to build something for you and many others.”

“Daddy also needs rest.”

I do not want them to think I love pressure. I want them to understand that responsibility has weight, and that weight is carried out of love, not addiction to work.

Explaining my heart does not reduce the sacrifice. It just makes the meaning clearer.

3. I choose to treat everyone as if there is a story I do not know.

My mother had a story I did not understand when I was young. That story included hardship, thriftiness, and a heart that would give up meat so her children could have the best.

Every parent has a story. Every child has a story. Every teacher, every staff, every colleague, every stranger has a story.

If I can slow down enough to remember that, I will criticise less and listen more. I will still hold people accountable, but I will hold them with context, not coldness. I will still correct my children, but I will also be more patient when I see their immaturity, because I remember my own.

The world becomes softer when you assume there is a story you do not know.

The Reverse That Redefines It All

As a child, I thought my mother loved chicken bones; as a father, my children think I love working non stop.

Both are misunderstandings. Both are the result of silence, not selfishness.

The danger in families and leadership is not that we give too much.

The danger is that we give without revealing our heart, until love looks like preference, sacrifice looks like personality, and duty looks like desire.

In the end, the opposite of love is not hate.

The opposite of love is misunderstanding.