Recognising our imperfections is part of what makes Singapore whole

Turning 60, the Republic faces a middle-aged reckoning: learning to be relaxed about its flaws.

- Bhavan Jaipragas Deputy Opinion Editor

Last year, around National Day, just after I had moved back to Singapore, I wrote about seeing the country again with fresh eyes—how we seemed kinder, gentler, and more at ease with our multiracialism.

My point was that, in the eyes of a returnee like myself, it is far more apparent that the experiment our founders embarked on six decades ago is succeeding, even if day-to-day life sometimes obscures that progress.

Months later, at my secondary school cohort's 20-year reunion, a friend who follows my writing gently challenged me on this.

Had I laid it on a bit too thick? If I had, it was understandable, he suggested, because there's a tic in how we "Singapore-splain," how we verbalise our national character.

In his view, most Singaporeans, with a sort of siege mentality, tend to believe that our collective imperfections cannot be given an open airing and must be contained, suppressed even.

Given this, he asked: Would I walk back anything I'd written in that article?

Paid as I am to overthink, this kind of feedback loops in my head. It's welcome, necessary even, coming from an inner circle of childhood friends who offer only honest observations.

Over the year, I found myself recalling that conversation repeatedly—especially while gritting my teeth at zebra crossings, with cars barrelling past expecting me to save myself, or when monstrous, surely illegal PMDs, blaring loud music, tailgate me impatiently on narrow footpaths.

At these moments, I reconsidered my sepia-tinted portrayal of Singaporean kindness.

More broadly, though, having settled back home and grappled again with the evolving shape of Singaporean identity, I've become intrigued by whether there's something in what he said about being reflexively defensive.

Is this tendency perhaps an overachiever's reflex, a socially-prescribed perfectionism?