When Durian Season Teaches You the Law of Sacrifice

It’s durian season again. You can smell it at every street corner, the pungent sweetness seeping into the car ride home after a long day. It’s the 8th of July. A plain Tuesday, but I find myself recording this because it doesn’t feel plain at all. I’m tired. More than usual. There’s a lot of running around this week. Hospital visits. Keeping the house in order while my wife recovers. Feeding and putting three boys to bed. And it’s exam week on top of that.

There’s no rest when you’re raising children. There’s no pause button when you’re leading people either. Somewhere in the swirl of parenting and working and trying to stay sane, I’m reminded of one truth that refuses to leave me alone tonight: if you want to grow up, you have to give up.

It sounds harsh at first. But it’s the law. The law Moses lived by. The law every parent discovers when they’re staring at unfinished homework at 11 p.m. and a little face that wants to be seen. The law every leader faces when they realise that staying relevant isn’t about the perks you offer. It’s about what you’re willing to let go.

One Father, Three Sons, and the Choice to Let Go

I’m thinking of my eldest, Aden. I gave him authority tonight. Not just chores, real authority. I asked him to lead his brothers, Eann and Evan, through their night routine. Brush teeth. Wash up. Get into bed. He did it. Not perfectly, but beautifully in his own way. It was a small moment, but I could see it in his eyes. The spark of “I can do this. I am trusted.”

It reminded me of my own mother. She never read any parenting books. She never sat through leadership seminars. She didn’t study how to coach children. But she was faithful. She stayed up with me when my grades were hopeless. She sacrificed sleep, money, comfort, reputation. All of it. So I could sit for exams that I was never guaranteed to pass. She gave up so I could grow up.

Tonight I caught a glimpse of that same thread playing out in my house. I was laser-focused on Aden’s science revision. An hour and a half. I watched him fight to stay awake, but his eyes shone when he answered questions he didn’t think he knew. He felt seen. He felt helped. He felt loved. And yet, in that same moment, I felt the sharp guilt that Eann, my second boy, was left out. He has his Malay test on Thursday. I couldn’t give him even thirty percent of my energy tonight. He struggled alone. And Evan, my youngest, he’s still in the early years. Too young to worry about tests. For now, he watches his brothers navigate all this, silently absorbing what his turn will look like when it comes.

That’s the tension I sit in every night as a father. You can’t give everything to everyone. To lift one, you must lay something down. To pour deeply into one child, you accept that another may go to sleep wanting more of you. It breaks you open. But that’s what growing up costs.

Moses, Maxwell, and the Uncomfortable Truth About Growth

This isn’t just parenting. It’s leadership. It’s life.

Earlier today I read about Moses in Exodus. How he gave up the palace of Egypt, all the privilege, all the status, to wander the wilderness. But he didn’t stop there. After forty quiet years tending sheep, he gave up obscurity too. When the burning bush called his name, Moses argued with God. Who am I to lead? I’m not enough. I’m a stutterer. I’m insignificant.

But God didn’t ask for perfect. He asked for sacrifice. And Moses learned that the higher you go, the more you must lay down. He gave up comfort for purpose. He gave up safety for calling. He gave up excuses for obedience. And every new chapter cost him something more than the last.

John Maxwell calls it the Law of Sacrifice. A leader must give up to go up. But no one tells you this when you first dream of leading something meaningful. You think leadership means more control, more freedom, more perks. In truth, it means losing your grip on comfort. It means surrendering illusions of fairness or balance.

When you lead a team, the same tension shows up. Loyalty is no longer guaranteed. Your best people won’t stay just because you offer them a better title or a fancier bonus. These days, they stay because working with you feels like the most meaningful chapter of their career story. And that means you must keep giving up parts of yourself. Your comfort. Your need for control. Your old ways of doing things. So you can make the room for them to grow.

Tsutaya Bookstore in Japan gets this. They’re famous for surrounding their designers with giants. For sending them out into the world, sometimes halfway across the globe, to meet thought leaders, artists, even farmers, so they come back full of relevance. They don’t bind their top talent with golden handcuffs. They become the place their people choose, again and again, because it’s the gateway to their next level.

This is what giving up to grow up looks like at work. You invest your best energy in your exceptional ten percent, even when it means some people might feel left out. You choose to stretch your stars rather than hold everyone to the same safe standard. You risk being misunderstood. You trade short-term comfort for long-term lift.

Picking Up Weight So You Can Put It Down

Tonight, my gym bag is still in the hallway. I go there every day because it reminds me of this: you grow by picking up weight you think you can’t bear. But the real measure isn’t just how much you lift. It’s whether you can put it down when it’s time. That’s the paradox. Hold the bar too tight, and you’ll hurt yourself. Grip too long, and your muscle tears. Release is strength, not weakness.

Same for leadership. Same for fatherhood. Same for life.

Aden will remember that I trusted him to lead his brothers, even when he’s grown and doing something I can’t imagine yet. Eann may not remember tonight’s test revision, but he’ll remember the day he chose to help himself, even when he felt unseen. Evan will grow up watching how his brothers navigate the unfairness of a father who cannot be everywhere at once. Maybe he’ll grow up less entitled and more willing to sacrifice for the ones he loves.

I don’t want to hold onto false hope. The hope that somehow I can keep all three boys perfectly happy, perfectly covered, perfectly equal. That is the lie of self-preservation. The real truth is that parenting, leading, living, all of it, is a long lesson in laying things down.

When you lead, when you parent, when you dare to grow up, you will choose who gets your best tonight, and who must wait for their turn tomorrow. It is never perfect. It is always costly. But it is worth it.

So here’s what I remind myself tonight as the house settles into silence.

Give up your need to fix everything.

Give up your illusion of balance.

Give up your false control.

Give up to grow up.

And when the weight feels heavy, remember this. You pick it up to learn how to lay it down.

The Reverse That Redefines It All

The opposite of growing up isn’t staying small. It’s clutching what you were meant to surrender. We like to believe holding on makes us strong, that we can keep everyone happy, shield our children from unfairness, control our team’s loyalty by offering enough perks. But the truth is, the weight that actually grows us is the weight we learn to lay down. Aden, Eann, and Evan will not remember whether I balanced everything perfectly. They will remember a father who let go of trying to be everywhere at once, so they could stand on their own feet when I couldn’t catch them.

The same is true in my work. People don’t stay because you hold them tighter. They stay when you become the place that gives them room to grow, even if it means they outgrow you one day. Moses didn’t step into his purpose by gripping the palace door shut behind him. He walked away empty-handed so he could come back open-handed. That’s the real reversal: what you loosen your grip on will become the thing that frees you to grow into the next version of yourself: wiser, lighter, and more human than before.