Bucket List Part 1

My thoughts have drifted over the idea of death recently. I guess it started with that whole conversation we had in Johor when Johann, Joe, Brian and I went cycling there recently. This was where we talked about how great it would be to plan our own funeral.

My Facebook status message proclaiming the same attracted a fair amount of comment, some of which was surprising.

In the couple of weeks since, there have been the deaths of a senior minister in Singapore and the very tragic suicide of Tyler Clementi to occupy my thoughts.

Then last night, after my evening plans were disrupted and I chose to stay home for some quiet time on my own rather than join Mei and some friends for a birthday celebration, I decided to put on a DVD I’d bought some years ago but had never watched: The Bucket List, starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman.


Maybe it was a touch predictable, but a movie starring either of these two cannot be anything but brimming with excellent acting. What more one with both of them? Nicholson’s edgy, just this side of over-the-top characterisation fit the role well and contrasted nicely with Freeman’s quieter, more understated style.

More importantly to me, the theme sat perfectly with my recent thoughts of mortality and the impermanence of life. There were a couple of stand-out moments in the movie for me, most notably these:

Is it really Egyptian?
The two questions you get asked when you reach Heaven’s Gate or wherever it is they believed you went to, that is.

“Have you found joy in your life?
Has your life brought joy to others?”

We’ve made our lives more and more complex. Our day-to-day is an amalgam of career (with its own intricate mix of goals, interaction, satisfaction, remuneration and so on), home, children, recreation, familial obligations and so on. We’ve long recognised we need to return to basics, to somehow rediscover the simple purity we had at childbirth, and to divest ourselves of the bits that bring us to the edge of stress-induced paroxysm of panic and nervous ruination.

We attach importance to so many things that really don’t matter in the greater scheme of things. Douglas Adams discussed it in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy when he described the perpetual human state of unhappiness:
“Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movement of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn’t the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.”

How succinctly and well put.

To understand these two questions on a deeper level, I guess we’ll need to examine what actually ‘joy’ is. For the purpose of brevity and because this is my blog, I shall simply think of ‘joy’ as a state of pure contentment that is divorced from external causes and influences i.e. it isn’t showing the middle finger to the driver who cut you up, or bumping into your ex when you’re out with your new, drop-dead-gorgeous, ultra-rich, uber-sexy girlfriend. Nor is it winning the lottery or that multi-million dollar account you;ve been chasing for 6 months. OK, you get the idea of what it is NOT?

So what is it?

Well, I guess it’s different for everyone, but perhaps it can be described as that feeling you get the moment every part of your being connects simultaneously and completely with every part of the universe. That point when you suddenly understand who you are, and why you’re here in the first place. And that it has nothing to do with small green pieces of paper (heck in our currency that’s only five bucks), or the idiot in the Mercedes, or your ex.

It’s that moment when everything makes sense, and you can see and feel and understand that despite suffering that may be around you, or death, or destruction, that you are indeed one with everything you can see or hear or feel or touch or smell.

So, if we were to condense our life’s purpose into two questions, I guess these two would be it.
Many have said it, sang about it, led people towards it, even preached about it - and some in the process have moved many small green pieces of paper from other people’s pockets into their own - and indeed some of my favourite lines have been in Lennon’s songs and Richard Bach’s books and so on.

But at the end of the day, or perhaps at the end of our lives, what really matters is whether we, personally, can answer ‘Yes!’ to both.

Part 2 coming up soon…

Some friendships are best kept distant

Call me naive, but I have only recently learnt that there are some friendships which work best when you don’t see each other that often.

I have a smallish circle of friends, preferring close friends rather than many friends. In part this is due to circumstance - having studied and lived abroad at key times of my life means I don’t have the advantage of being close geographically to my alma maters and, thus, the alumni and the network that accords.

I do, however, also naturally prefer close rather than superficial relationships and if there is one regret I have when it comes to friends is that I have lost touch with one or two very good friends with whom I shared the  experiences of some of my crucial growing years.

That regret is balanced out by the warm, accepting, unconditional and at times intense friendships with a select few with whom I’ve spent long hours, days, weeks together, sharing meals, work and in some cases, homes, with.

So it’s taken me awhile to understand what I think many people instinctively know and that this doesn’t always work. My natural sledgehammer approach to life, where I insist on banging things into the shape I want them to be, has once again caused me to have a protracted learning curve in this instance.

But like all things else, it is a valuable lesson. I have begun to understand that there are some friends who will drift into your life every other year or so, cause a stir, then meld back into the mists of time only to reappear again some years later. And I now see that this is actually a healthy thing and it’s just one more life-lesson I am grateful for the opportunity to have learnt through experience.

Now if only someone could link me up again with my erstwhile best-buddy from Secondary School days, Ng Kien Hoon. Last I found he worked with Pinsent Masons in Hong Kong and I think he was also with Project Orbis. Anyone have any clues?

Don't wait too late! Five Regrets of the Dying

These words weren't mine, but I find they just make so much sense, hence I'd like to share them with you.

Recently I've been contemplating the topics of childbirth and additions to the world with two good friends soon to be parents - one for the first time and one for the second, and another who became a parent for the first time some months ago.

It's made me reflect on my own fatherhood, my successes and my failings and it has also made me look hard at a philosophy I've espoused for years:
Forget about life after death. It's Life before death that we should all be focussed on.

I've tried to live this way, with varying degrees of success and some extremely painful consequences. The regrets I have in my life are all from not living true to these tenets.

I hope you never have to have those regrets.


Five Regrets of the Dying
By Bronnie Ware, Platinum Quality Author

For many years I worked in palliative care. My patients were those who had gone home to die. Some incredibly special times were shared. I was with them for the last three to twelve weeks of their lives.


People grow a lot when they are faced with their own mortality. I learned never to underestimate someone's capacity for growth. Some changes were phenomenal. Each experienced a variety of emotions, as expected, denial, fear, anger, remorse, more denial and eventually acceptance. Every single patient found their peace before they departed though, every one of them.

When questioned about any regrets they had or anything they would do differently, common themes surfaced again and again. Here are the most common five:


1. I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.This was the most common regret of all. When people realise that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled. Most people had not honoured even a half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made.

It is very important to try and honour at least some of your dreams along the way. From the moment that you lose your health, it is too late. Health brings a freedom very few realise, until they no longer have it.

2. I wish I didn't work so hard.This came from every male patient that I nursed. They missed their children's youth and their partner's companionship. Women also spoke of this regret. But as most were from an older generation, many of the female patients had not been breadwinners. All of the men I nursed deeply regretted spending so much of their lives on the treadmill of a work existence.

By simplifying your lifestyle and making conscious choices along the way, it is possible to not need the income that you think you do. And by creating more space in your life, you become happier and more open to new opportunities, ones more suited to your new lifestyle.

3. I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings.Many people suppressed their feelings in order to keep peace with others. As a result, they settled for a mediocre existence and never became who they were truly capable of becoming. Many developed illnesses relating to the bitterness and resentment they carried as a result.

We cannot control the reactions of others. However, people may initially react when you change the way you are by speaking honestly, but in the end it raises the relationship to a whole new and healthier level. Either that or it releases the unhealthy relationship from your life. Either way, you win.

4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.Often they would not truly realise the full benefits of old friends until their dying weeks and it was not always possible to track them down. Many had become so caught up in their own lives that they had let golden friendships slip by over the years. There were many deep regrets about not giving friendships the time and effort that they deserved. Everyone misses their friends when they are dying.

It is common for anyone in a busy lifestyle to let friendships slip.  But when you are faced with your approaching death, the physical details of life fall away. People do want to get their financial affairs in order if possible. But it is not money or status that holds the true importance for them. They want to get things in order more for the benefit of those they love. Usually though, they are too ill and weary to ever manage this task. It is all comes down to love and relationships in the end. That is all that remains in the final weeks, love and relationships.

5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.This is a surprisingly common one. Many did not realise until the end that happiness is a choice. They had stayed stuck in old patterns and habits. The so-called 'comfort' of familiarity overflowed into their emotions, as well as their physical lives. Fear of change had them pretending to others, and to themselves, that they were content.  When deep within, they longed to laugh properly and have silliness in their life again.

When you are on your deathbed, what others think of you is a long way from your mind. How wonderful to be able to let go and smile again, long before you are dying.

Life is a choice. It is YOUR life. Choose consciously, choose wisely, choose honestly.

Choose happiness.