The nasi lemak stall was winning.
I knew it.
My waistline knew it.
My doctor would probably have known it too if he had been standing there watching me stare longingly at a tray of fried chicken wings.
There are few things more dangerous than a man who has already eaten dinner convincing himself that he has not really eaten dinner.
I had gone to the shopping mall intending to buy one thing.
One.
Like every responsible adult.
Twenty minutes later, I was standing in front of a nasi lemak stall, carrying three completely unrelated items and trying to calculate whether adding an extra chicken wing would significantly shorten my lifespan.
The answer was probably yes.
I was still debating the matter when I heard a voice behind me.
"Mr Adi?"
There are certain voices that remain lodged somewhere in the back of a teacher's mind.
Not because they are loud.
Not because they are memorable.
But because they belong to students whom you once spent months, sometimes years, watching grow up.
I turned.
For a second, I did what every teacher does when unexpectedly encountering a former student in the wild.
I searched my mental archives.
Face.
Class.
Year.
Memory.
Then everything clicked.
"Oh!"
The recognition arrived first.
The surprise came immediately after.
Because standing before me was someone I had not seen in years.
And like many former students, they looked completely different from the person I remembered.
Not unrecognisable.
Just... older.
More settled.
The uncertainty that had once accompanied them seemed to have disappeared.
The nervousness I remembered had softened.
In its place was confidence.
Comfort.
Ease.
Most importantly, happiness.
Real happiness.
Not the kind people manufacture for social media.
Not the kind produced by carefully angled photographs and inspirational captions.
The quiet kind.
The kind that settles into a person's smile.
The kind that changes the way they carry themselves.
We exchanged the usual questions.
What are you doing now?
How has life been?
Are you still studying?
Working?
Surviving adulthood?
The last question, I suspect, is now the unofficial national greeting of Singapore.
As we chatted, I found myself remembering a conversation we had years ago when they were still my student.
At the time, they had approached me regarding something deeply important to them.
It was not an easy conversation.
Not because there was hostility.
There wasn't.
Not because there was anger.
There wasn't any of that either.
It was difficult because both of us were trying to navigate a situation bigger than ourselves.
The student was asking to be acknowledged in a particular way.
I was trying to explain the limitations that came with my role as an educator within an institution.
Neither of us had created the rules.
Neither of us controlled the system.
Yet there we were, sitting across from one another, trying to make sense of it all.
I remember telling the student something that I still believe today.
Sometimes people mistake understanding for agreement.
They are not the same thing.
A person can understand your position without sharing it.
A person can respect your perspective without possessing the authority to act upon it.
And in schools especially, educators often find themselves standing in that uncomfortable space between empathy and responsibility.
There are things we would like to do.
There are things we are allowed to do.
And occasionally, those two circles do not perfectly overlap.
I explained as honestly as I could what my professional boundaries were.
More importantly, I explained why those boundaries existed.
I did not hide behind vague statements.
I did not pretend the conversation wasn't happening.
I simply told the truth.
This is what I can do.
This is what I cannot do.
This is why.
You may not like the answer.
I understand that.
But I believe you deserve an honest one.
What I remember most, however, was not what I said.
It was how the student responded.
They listened.
Asked questions.
Shared their thoughts.
Disagreed with some things.
Agreed with others.
And somehow, despite the complexity of the topic, the conversation remained respectful from beginning to end.
Nobody stormed out.
Nobody raised their voice.
Nobody tried to score points.
Two human beings simply sat together and talked.
Looking back, that seems increasingly rare.
Perhaps that is why the memory stayed with me.
We often hear people say that respect is a two-way street.
The phrase has been repeated so often that it risks becoming meaningless.
Yet every now and then, life offers a reminder of what it actually looks like.
Respect is not agreement.
Agreement is easy.
Respect is what happens when two people hold different positions yet continue treating one another with dignity.
Respect is listening.
Respect is honesty.
Respect is recognising another person's humanity even when circumstances prevent you from giving them exactly what they want.
And perhaps most importantly, respect is trusting that the other person is capable of hearing difficult truths without being diminished by them.
Young people are often far more capable of this than adults realise.
One of the greatest misconceptions about students is that they need every difficult reality softened beyond recognition.
In my experience, students can handle difficult conversations remarkably well.
What they struggle with is inconsistency.
They struggle when adults avoid questions.
When adults say one thing and mean another.
When adults hide behind authority rather than explaining it.
Most students can accept boundaries.
What they cannot accept is feeling dismissed.
And that distinction matters.
A lot.
Teaching, after all, has never really been about delivering information.
If it were, teachers would have been replaced by search engines years ago.
The work has always been relational.
The syllabus matters.
The examinations matter.
The grades matter.
But beneath all of that sits something even more important.
Trust.
Students learn best from adults they trust.
And trust is built through thousands of small interactions.
A conversation after class.
A check-in before an exam.
A moment of encouragement.
An honest explanation.
A difficult discussion handled with care.
Brick by brick.
Year after year.
The funny thing about teaching is that we rarely get to see the final result.
Most students leave before the story is finished.
We witness a chapter.
Sometimes only a few pages.
Then life takes over.
They graduate.
Move on.
Find jobs.
Find partners.
Find purpose.
Make mistakes.
Recover from them.
Grow into people we can scarcely imagine while they are sitting in our classrooms.
And occasionally, if we are lucky, we bump into them years later in front of a nasi lemak stall.
As I stood there speaking with my former student, I realised that what made me happiest was not remembering the conversation we once had.
It was seeing who they had become.
Confident.
Healthy.
Comfortable.
Happy.
Because for all the discussions we have about education, success, achievement, and outcomes, I suspect most teachers share a much simpler hope.
We want our students to flourish.
Not become versions of us.
Not become statistics.
Not become trophies.
Themselves.
The fullest version of themselves they can possibly be.
Successful, certainly.
But also kind.
Capable.
Resilient.
And happy.
Because achievement without happiness feels strangely incomplete.
And seeing a former student standing before you, years later, carrying that happiness so effortlessly—that is a feeling no report card can measure.
No performance review can capture it.
No award can replicate it.
It is one of the quiet rewards of the profession.
A reminder that long after students leave our classrooms, they continue growing.
They continue becoming.
They continue writing chapters we will never get to read.
And every now and then, life grants us a brief glimpse of the next page.
The conversation eventually ended.
We wished each other well.
The student disappeared back into the crowd.
And I stood there for a moment, smiling to myself.
Then I looked back at the nasi lemak stall.
The chicken wing was still there.
Waiting.
Patient.
Tempting.
Much like education itself, some battles are simply unwinnable.
I bought the chicken wing.
And for reasons I still cannot fully explain, dinner tasted a little better that evening.
Written by: Adi Jamaludin
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