Leave the ROI Behind and Move On

We are very used to investing in our children. Children's education is a big business. Parents are willing to pay extra money to, either improve the children to be better than their peers, to learn something new that we may never heard before, or fix something that is classified as a “disorder” in terminology. We have seas of patience to cultivate the next generations.

While we, as adults, frequently question about what’s the ROI of what we love to do, we never, as far as I know, ask our children what’s your ROI studying for exams or joining this class. We are scared to start something new because we don’t know what the ROI will be. It is because most of us trust the system will bring our children to grow. We don’t need to question the ROI during the process. ROI will eventually come through the system.

As adults, we learn too much about ROI in our work. If we can’t figure out the ROI, we won’t start a new step.

But it is not true. The system will only bring us what the system was created for, to what we know about. The system will never bring us to a place where we don’t know yet to explore. Our world is full of uncertainty and when our children grow up, they will be in a more ambiguous ecology than our generations. What used to work may not continue working.

Opening a door of uncertainty that falls outside the radar of the current system can never be measured by ROI, not for the children, not for the adults.

Parents invested in their children expect the children to have a “return” to them.

“What is your ROI?” means “What will you return to me?”

My answer is, “I don’t know. But I will return something you have never imagined.”