It's funny, when you are given a certain expected time span to live that is seemingly shorter than everybody else's - when you suddenly start to treasure life a lot more.
Knowing my diagnosis drastically altered my priorities and goals in life.
It had the effect of throwing my entire life into disarray and centering me back on that desperate singularity that all men must meet one day.
Death.
So often, we are caught up in the hustle and bustle of life, that we forget that regardless if we are given 7 weeks, 7 months or 77 years, we must all meet the inevitable end that is inescapable from birth.
Success to me meant so many different things at different stages of my life.
When I was a kid in primary school, I wanted to be accepted. I would do everything I could do gain a form of "acceptance". It wavered between attempting to get good academic results, and subsequently, failing to do so, I decided to join the group that gave me the attention I wanted. I would cheat, I would fabricate fantastical out-of-this-world stories that inflated a false sense of pride within myself. I lost some great friends when they realized I was heading down that dark path. Nonetheless, my ego was worth more to me compared to anything else.
When I was in secondary school, I was introduced to a whole new, different world. It was a world where rules were meant to be broken, and to escape the consequences of breaking them meant that you were one up.
These were the darkest years of my life. Leading a double, sometimes triple existence, I would - on one hand - act the good kid in school, the loyal friend to my peers, but when the night fell, a different mask would be placed over my apparently bespoke personality.
Success to me, then was to be admired by people. Being badly scarred by acne, not even averagely "sporty" by any standards, not doing well academically, it was easy to fall prey to the desperate cravings of ego. I only had one marketable point in society - and that was my youth. And if I were an entrepreneur by today's standard, I would be a millionaire. Clubbing, pubbing, drinking and... basically everything that should not be done by a kid of 13-15 years old.
I was living a high life. Cash was not a problem, social standing was not a problem. I had more than what any kid needed or wanted.
That was until I encountered death to my face. It scared me witless. But yet, it was that which scarred me so deeply I could not even look back at my past.
[Coincidentally, that was also when I destroyed my previous blog, and restarted with this.]
I had to find a sense of purpose.
But first, I had to alter my definition of success.
By the time I was in polytechnic, success had become somewhat of a puritan virtue - to do well in whatever field you are placed in, for the glory of God.
I worked hard, I studied hard and if there was anything negative that people would have said about me, it would never have been that I was lazy.
Success in that context reshaped my life, with the blind belief that as long as I worked hard, my life will be well.
The following years were series after series of chapters that proved the above point so very wrong.
Polytechnic life ended and Army life begin.
I forced myself to that puritan mould and pushed my physical boundaries to it's limits, and yet, at the most critical moment, something would go wrong - again. In the army, it was enough to relegate me to 9 months of being in a temporary Pes D status, while they figured out what was wrong with my body. Nonetheless, again, I was proven that it doesn't matter how hard you strive - if life wishes to throw a spanner in your face, it will do it, and hard.
Success was becoming somewhat of an unreachable goal then.
I decided to give one more push at trying to be "successful". And decided that hey, why not try to change the world for the better?
What better way to reach out to the world then through media?
Thereafter, my stint in Mediacorp ensued. It was tough. Very tough. It made Army seem like a holiday chalet. The working hours regularly crossed over a hundred hours a week, with no end in sight for projects after projects.
Burnt out became as real to me as my gastric and dark eye-rings.
But the last straw came when I found out, to my horror, that the diploma path and the degree path were vastly different. And the camel's back broke when I realized that despite me wanting to change the world through media, ultimately, the silver screen shows what the people want to see. The law of economics drives the media engine.
I decided to take a leap of faith and consume all my life's savings at one go for one more grasp at getting a degree (prior to that NTU and NUS rejected me - a double dip holder with and agg of 3.6).
I was accepted instantly into QUT in Australia with a drastically shortened time span to get a degree within 1.5 years.
Success to me then was making the best use of my time, to experience as much as I could, to learn as much as I could and fling open the door as wide as possible to every window of opportunity that could arise.
It was also during that time when my perception of faith and the material world drastically changed.
This time round, life didn't throw a spanner at my face.
However, it did emphasize the over-pertinent point that you can never be prepared enough for what was to come next.
Success - at that point of time, again, was to grab any window of opportunity.
And the window came when I was given the opportunity to do a U-turn into the Financial sector. Without a moment's hesitation, I grabbed at that opportunity.
Twelve CMFAS examinations in 2 months.
From a person who had absolutely NO knowledge in finance, to a full-fledged banker.
Stocks, options, structured products, insurance, financial regulations, technical analysis. It was a do-or-die. And I knew that this window would probably open only once.
Success was when I received my RIN Code as a banker in DBS.
Or so I thought.
I was successful, in contrast to my peers, many who were still slogging through university, or seemingly trudging through the tough media-mud.
Or so I thought.
Until an elderly man came into my office and set down in front of my desk and broke down. He was in his early 80s, and a blue collared worker (I assumed). He asked me to explain in detail why he lost so much money in a product that he bought quite some time back. He invested a sizable amount of his savings into this "basket" of products and without an exception, every one lost a huge amount of money. The word "principle protected" had a very different definition at that point of time.
Long story short, I was so traumatized by that incident I decided to quit sales completely. Because I understood the pressure that the banker was probably under to close the sales, and yet I fully empathized with the lost of this old man's (almost entire) retirement savings.
I took MC the next day and I just laid in bed.
Was the banker successful? Was the old man just "unlucky"?
What vicious form of success was this that had to be built on the bones of others?
I quit a high-flying job and decided to "relegate" myself to a role of a service RM.
To this day, I believe that my decision to leave was correct.
To stay in that role would have altered my perception of what was good and right, muted my empathy for suffering in place of more sales, and worst of all, it would severely scar my moral conscious and compass.
There was a need for another definition of success.
Being an ARM at my current workplace is no bed of roses either. Getting ticked off by customers for things entirely out of our control, and likewise, managing the expectations of the bankers that we work for.
Success was making your workplace a happy one. Or so I believed.
Make your customers happy, make your colleagues happy, make your boss happy.
There is a saying, "when the going gets tough, the tough gets going". The person obviously didn't meet a wall in his life.
Trying to make everybody happy was a huge mistake. I placed so much pressure on myself that it became nightmarish. I could not disappoint. I must not disappoint. If I have to stay back and work extra hours to complete a task to see the smile on my colleagues' / bosses' face the next day, I would do it.
In a meritocratic society, the flaw with this mindset is: "hey, this person thrives under pressure, let's up the ante." without realizing that he is at his breaking point.
And there was it.
My body decided enough was enough, and literally, collapsed.
Two serious hospitalizations in less than 6 months, with bills amounting to tens of thousands of dollars. (Thank God for insurance).
The toll that my definition for success took was a price that could not be measured in monetary value. - my health. And not anecdotally.
My health literally failed me.
And with that, my life.
The doctor told me that I had weeks. And I could make the best use of my time to do what I wanted to do instead.
The hammer fell. And it fell so hard that I went into depression.
How do I tell my parents?
How do I tell my family and loved ones?
Will I be a burden to them?
Will my parents have to "send off" their child soon?
It just couldn't be true.
The "price" was just too high!
It wasn't fair!
It wasn't fair!
My heart sank so deep that I thought I would never recover again.
But in the deepest darkest, the smallest ray of light provides the brightest, most steadfast hope.
My God.
My Lord beyond the blue.
Success was never about me, or was it about people around me, or even changing the world.
Success was never relevant in the first place.
The ultimate reality that all men must face is death. The inevitable, inescapable conclusion of all humanity is death.
So what have I been striving for?
Success, for me, was bought on the cross.
And it did not matter one bit how well I did in life, or how the world thought I was or how happy I made the people around me.
At the very end, to simply hold on to His hand, is enough.
And to know that since the beginning, He has never let go of mine.
When I finish walking through the valley of death, He will be there.
When I am done with the struggles of my ailing body, He will meet me at the place where there is no pain, no sickness, and He will wipe away the last vestige of tears from my face with the same hand that brought me to Him.
That peace, that joy and hope that is in me, must now take the forefront.
Every day I live is borrowed time, and every single moment, I must live with the peace that, should today my Lord chooses to bring me home, I will go smiling.
And when that day comes, I will shout it from the mountaintops, from the highest heavens with every fibre of my being. "Yes, I am successful, because of my Saviour!"
"For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently." ~ Romans 8: 24-25
