Lessons from the Boston Marathon

These days (with an alpha of 0.05), you can be sure that anytime you pick up a newspaper, your phone, iPad, etc., you will find news of accidents, crimes and acts of violence that will make you wonder about our world. Anything from going to school/church/work to running a marathon can end in your departure from this world. Events like the Boston Marathon explosions make you realize how little control you have in this life. 

A wise woman once told me that when it is your time, you will go; but some deaths are clearly not yours. She gave an example of being hit by a drunk driver on your way home from a revival, school or business trip; and being hit while running away from a married man's wife because she came home early from her business trip. You die either way. However...

A colleague lost a neighbor in Mali last week. The guy was a pilot and after surviving one crash, was told to stay home cos the next one might take him. He said He'd rather die in a crash than stay home and be safe. He died pursuing his passion. 

Considering how uncertain the time you have left on this world is, we should not waste time on things we don't love; things that make no difference in the bigger picture. In a perfect world, we would all be doing what we love, everyday. In this imperfect world, let's spend as little time as possible on the things that don't matter. Time is precious.

In honor of the Boston casualties and all who lose life and limb in the most unexpected places, endeavor to not spend anytime doing one thing when you'd rather be doing another, especially if the second option is available to now. The only exception is when A will help you do B (or do it better in future), for instance, going to school to master your craft.

Prayers to all who were directly impacted by the Boston Marathon Events today and their families... and to all of us. May we remain safe in this increasingly unsafe world.

"Guard your heart above all else, for out of it flows the issues of life"

How many times have I heard this verse (Proverbs 4:23) and rolled my eyes? I've heard it so many times that I complete the sentence when it's started and we all know that means I'm not listening or taking that in, I'm just acknowledging it's there.

Today, that verse took on a whole new meaning for me. A friend recounted a story that left a bitter taste in my mouth; her neighbor was murdered by her husband when she asked for a separation after years of abuse.

The man insisted on dropping her off at her mother's because she was going with his children and he wanted to make sure they were safe. He stopped in the middle of nowhere and said the car had a problem and that he needed her help changing something in the back. It was a two hour drive to her mother's place and the children had fallen asleep in the back. When she got out, he knocked her unconscious, tied her up, and placed her on a pile of corn stalks that had been gathered in preparation to be burnt. He then set fire to the pile and left her for dead.

After that, he dropped the children off about a block from his wife's mother's place knowing that the nosiness of village neighbours would ensure they got to their grandma's. The children were still asleep (they were three and five years old).

Long story short, the woman was found when the smoke from the fire alerted neighbours. The corn stalks were not completely dry and so smoked a lot. She died after a week at the hospital. She told her story before dying.

Her children made it to their grandma's and the old lady's search for her daughter led to her finding out about the fire.

The man went to his family and told them he came home from work to find out the woman had run away with the children and that the woman had threatened suicide several times so he was worried and wanted them(his mum and sisters) to go check with his in-laws if his wife had come home.

The police followed his mom and sisters back and arrested him. Sadly, nothing they do to him will bring her back.

Some people make wrong choices about whom to entrust their hearts to and suffer heartache, etc. Some pay with their lives and/or souls.

Whom you decide to love and/or marry is not about who makes your friends the most envious of your good fortune or who can make your toes curl in bed. It's also a choice of how good the rest of your life will be, and sometimes as we've seen, how long that rest of your life will be.

As the New Living Translation puts it, "Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life".

Would you rather insure... or invest?

Earlier this week I watched a video that reminded me of something I've been thinking a lot about lately... This video by Charlie Chaplin had a lot of salient points and although I may not have understood or agreed 100% with all of it, the one thing that struck me was our human-ness and how helping another soul in need is integral to who we are as humans.

In today's evolving society and with the ever-increasing depths of evil the human mind can conceive and get the rest of the body to co-operate in carrying out,  it's easy to make excuses to NOT help those in need. Family does not look out for you anymore, friends let you down, and as for lovers (whether at the dating or marriage level), the less said about them, the better.

However, as I walked to class today, I thought about how reaching out to another in need is like an investment and how many of us choose to buy insurance instead. I am not a finance person so my analogy is quite basic here. Don't think too far if that is your field.

When we help another, we invest and a lot could happen to our investment. The financial markets may crash, a corrupt board of directors may squander our hard earned cash, or we could realize our investment was a scam, pure and simple. On the other hand, we could strike oil and make it big. If the person you help decides to bite the finger that fed it, it's a bad investment. Otherwise, you get your dividends, in cash and in kind(get your minds out of the gutter).

When we do NOT help, we could liken it to buying insurance in that we get to keep and safeguard what belongs to us against uncertainty. Definitely, insurance isn't 100% safe because claims could be denied, etc. but for the most part, we keep and protect what we have.

It seems sometimes that we are all buying insurance. I am guilty. Everyone is protecting what they have and not paying any forward. Whilst wealth may be preserved this way, none is created.

I pray that for the rest of the year and onward, we will all have the grace needed to make prudent investments with our time, our voice, our talents and capabilities, our support, encouragement, and material possessions when need be.

It's not easy, given how treacherous humans (remember this includes ourselves) can be. However it is easy when we think about the fact that we will carry none of these to the other side. When we die, our talents, money, etc. wont go with us. But the good we did with them may be paid forward into what awaits us in the afterlife. And I believe if we truly look hard enough, we'll find that more often than not, investments pay off in this life as well.

My Favourite Time of the Day is...

image source: totaltranslucency.wordpress.com

Just before Sunrise...
The moon is still there but is grudgingly conceding defeat and going down slowly

The sun is not yet out but it’s brighter than it’s been all night so I know that it is just around the corner

And as the sun lazily rises and bursts brightness onto the mellow scene, it’s the gift of a new day, to do with as I choose

It’s another day! Yesterday doesn’t matter so much anymore, unless I want it to and refuse (consciously or unconsciously) to move on. 

Today, I can take a step closer to my dream, or a step further away from it.

I can read a book, write, have intelligent discussions and advance my existing knowledge

I could discover the cure for cancer or AIDS

I could also do nothing, add no value whatsoever to my life or the world.

Or even subtract…

And that’s why I love this time of day; the endless possibilities…

And knowing that if I get to see this time of day tomorrow, I’ll want to be wiser and stronger. 
I'll want to feel good about my use of yesterday, which is today...
And so I am inspired to go out and make something of today


What is your favourite time of the day?

The Blessings of Life and Good Health

I hate hospitals. Every time I visit one, I receive confirmation I made the right decision not going anywhere near medicine. As noble and prestigious as it is, it is unfortunately not for me. Aside the fact that I can’t stand the sight of blood (which is ironic because I am a woman and no matter how careful I am not to get hurt, nature has dictated that I have to see blood on a regular basis), I find hospitals altogether too depressing and come away from each visit deeply melancholic. And no matter how everyone I meet tells me the disturbance and grief I feel witnessing death, dying and suffering would have passed with time had I gone into medicine, I am convinced otherwise. I would probably have committed suicide or taken to drugs or drinking by now. Barring these, I’d probably go mad. It’s not the profession. It’s just me.

Yesterday, I went to the hospital and the situation was not much different. I spent about two hours at the central OPD (Out Patients Department) and saw more suffering during that period than I saw the whole of last year. Seeing a group of nurses and doctors chatting heartily and laughing as they passed the corridor, I couldn’t help but gain some more respect for our men and women in white and green who work surrounded by pain and suffering all year through and maintain a merry countenance. Perhaps we really are unfair to our nurses. If I just lost a nine year old patient, I would definitely not be patient and would probably snap at you if you refused to take your soup because you don’t feel like it, or you cry because you hurt your little finger or something of the sort. Granted, some people are just sour and bitter without provocation and would snap at people even in they worked at Disneyland but I’ll just give them the benefit of the doubt.

Within five minutes after sitting down, I saw a boy who couldn’t possibly be a day over six years who had lost a leg and was using crutches, a daughter patiently walking her mum who had had a stroke and had little co-ordination and an eleven year old girl who had just had her eye taken out. I know her age for sure because I asked. Later, I realized these sights had been a walk in the park when I had to go through the accident center to get to the operating room where my mom was to be treated. A ‘kind’ nurse offered to show me around the male accident ward when she saw me looking around, probably because she thought I was interested. One look in the ward had me declining the offer faster than a speeding bullet.

Why am I sharing this with you? Being at the hospital yesterday made me realize how much we take for granted day-in, day-out. Many of us have not been to the hospital for anything more serious than a rash, the flu, malaria, changing the prescription of our glasses or tightening our braces in over five years. Some of us don’t remember the last time we were detained at a hospital. A few of us haven’t been sick for as long as we can remember and we don’t even realize how blessed we are. The blessing of good health is one of the easiest to take for granted, especially when you don’t come into contact with sick people very often. Yesterday, I was forced to take another look at that blessing.

When after six hours my mum emerged from the emergency room all wrapped up in a bandage, I thought I had never seen a more beautiful sight. Her operation had been performed with a local anesthesia so she was able to come home. Even though she will have to go back for dressing of the wound every other day and I will have to wait on her hands and foot since she cannot use her right hand until the wound completely heals, thinking of how many people came to the hospital with a parent, child or spouse yesterday and went home empty handed made me extremely grateful. Some patients died, some lost body parts and some were irreparably damaged or terminally ill. Some even go through all four conditions. Life is indeed a precious gift.

As my mom was recounting her experience in the operating room, she told how at a point, a vein tore and had to be tied up. Exhibiting my ignorance, I asked my dad if it would be sewn back, or if it wouldn’t affect her in anyway. Apparently, we destroy thousands of our finer veins every day. When you sit, you block the blood flow through hundreds of tiny veins in your backside. However, your internal transport system quickly adjusts to the diversion and nothing happens to you. When you get up, many of those blocked passages will never work again. However, new ones quickly replace those and the diversions work while this is done until it’s like nothing ever happened. In trying to explain the process to me, my dad stopped at a point in time and said “In fact, the whole process is incredible and so detailed and well-orchestrated that it tends to suggest that we were indeed created and not a result of say, a big bang”.

As you can well guess, this was the highlight of my day. Hearing this from my dad, who had studied science and the human anatomy for God-knows-how-many years, warmed my heart greatly. In this era of ‘enlightenment’ where academicians and scientists the world over are claiming their studies has led them to discover true knowledge and enlightenment and led them to reject God, it was a refreshing break. I won’t let myself be carried away by this topic though; it is a topic that will take at least another article to tackle.

If you woke up today and nothing hurts and everything works, if no loved one of yours is in intensive care or terminally ill. If you don’t have to take twenty-two pills a day under doctor’s advice to move on to the next day, you are blessed. Exercise and a good diet have not kept you that way. Certainly, they have helped. However, professional athletes in top form have dropped dead with no apparent reason. You are blessed. Use the blessing of life and good health wisely.

And just as an aside – the fact that you have access to healthcare should you fall sick, is another blessing on its own. Visit the WHO (World Health Organisation) website and find out exactly how many people don’t have even that. You will be amazed.

Copyright (c) 2010

First Published in the 'Daily Graphic' (March, 2010)