Father was a hardworking man who delivered bread as a living to
support his wife and three children. He spent all his evenings after
work attending classes, hoping to improve himself so that he could one
day find a better paying job. Except for Sundays, Father hardly ate a
meal together with his family. He worked and studied very hard because
he wanted to provide his family with the best money could buy.
Whenever
the family complained that he was not spending enough time with them,
he reasoned that he was doing all this for them. But he often yearned to
spend more time with his family.
The day came when the
examination results were announced. To his joy, Father passed, and with
distinctions too! Soon after, he was offered a good job as a senior
supervisor which paid handsomely.
Like a dream come true, Father
could now afford to provide his family with life’s little luxuries like
nice clothing, fine food and vacation abroad.
However, the family
still did not get to see father for most of the week. He continued to
work very hard, hoping to be promoted to the position of manager. In
fact, to make himself a worthily candidate for the promotion, he
enrolled for another course in the open university.
Again,
whenever the family complained that he was not spending enough time with
them, he reasoned that he was doing all this for them. But he often
yearned to spend more time with his family.
Father’s hard work
paid off and he was promoted. Jubilantly, he decided to hire a maid to
relieve his wife from her domestic tasks. He also felt that their
three-room flat was no longer big enough, it would be nice for his
family to be able to enjoy the facilities and comfort of a condominium.
Having experienced the rewards of his hard work many times before,
Father resolved to further his studies and work at being promoted again.
The family still did not get to see much of him. In fact, sometimes
Father had to work on Sundays entertaining clients. Again, whenever the
family complained that he was not spending enough time with them, he
reasoned that he was doing all this for them. But he often yearned to
spend more time with his family.
As expected, Father’s hard work
paid off again and he bought a beautiful condominium overlooking the
coast of Singapore. On the first Sunday evening at their new home,
Father declared to his family that he decided not to take anymore
courses or pursue any more promotions. From then on he was going to
devote more time to his family.
Father did not wake up the next day.
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Sharing with you today is a speech from Dr. Richard Teo, a highly successful and wealthy cosmetic surgen in Singapore.
While at his peak of wealth and health (he exercised a lot to maintain a great body and health, see pictures at the end of this post),
he felt backache out of no-where, then he was diagnosed with stage-4 of
lung cancer, which he could only live a few months left.
In his
speech, he shared his experiences of becoming a really successful surgen
doctor and his realization of what is true happiness in life: not
wealth, not beautiful cars, not beautiful houses, but the sharing,
helping, and caring of family members, friends and people around.
Speech
was delivered on 19-January-2012 at a medical school in Singapore. He
passed away on 18-October-2012 (40 years old, born in 1972). The sound
is not too good so you may have to turn maximum your volume.
Below is a transcript of his talk from the video above.
Hi good
morning to all of you. My voice is a bit hoarse, so please bear with
me. I thought I’ll just introduce myself. My name is Richard, I’m a
medical doctor. And I thought I’ll just share some thoughts of my life.
It’s my pleasure to be invited by prof. Hopefully, it can get you
thinking about how. as you pursue this. embarking on your training to
become dental surgeons, to think about other things as well.
Since
young, I am a typical product of today’s society. Relatively successful
product that society requires. From young, I came from a below average
family. I was told by the media. and people around me that happiness is
about success. And that success is about being wealthy. With this
mind-set, I’ve always be extremely competitive, since I was young.
Not
only do I need to go to the top school, I need to have success in all
fields. Uniform groups, track, everything. I needed to get trophies,
needed to be successful, I needed to have colours award, national
colours award, everything. So I was highly competitive since young. I
went on to medical school, graduated as a doctor. Some of you may know
that within the medical faculty, ophthalmology is one of the most highly
sought after specialities. So I went after that as well. I was given a
traineeship in ophthalmology, I was also given a research scholarship by
NUS to develop lasers to treat the eye.
So in the process, I was
given 2 patents, one for the medical devices, and another for the
lasers. And you know what, all this academic achievements did not bring
me any wealth. So once I completed my bond with MOH, I decided that this
is taking too long, the training in eye surgery is just taking too
long. And there’s lots of money to be made in the private sector. If
you’re aware, in the last few years, there is this rise in aesthetic
medicine. Tons of money to be made there. So I decided, well, enough of
staying in institution, it’s time to leave. So I quit my training
halfway and I went on to set up my aesthetic clinic… in town, together
with a day surgery centre.
You know the irony is that people do
not make heroes out average GP (general practitioner), family
physicians. They don’t. They make heroes out of people who are rich and
famous. People who are not happy to pay $20 to see a GP, the same person
have no qualms paying ten thousand dollars for a liposuction, 15
thousand dollars for a breast augmentation, and so on and so forth. So
it’s a no brainer isn’t? Why do you want to be a gp? Become an aesthetic
physician. So instead of healing the sick and ill, I decided that I’ll
become a glorified beautician. So, business was good, very good. It
started off with waiting of one week, then became 3weeks, then one
month, then 2 months, then 3 months. I was overwhelmed; there were just
too many patients. Vanities are fantastic business. I employed one
doctor, the second doctor, the 3rd doctor, the 4th doctor. And within
the 1st year, we’re already raking in millions. Just the 1st year. But
never is enough because I was so obsessed with it. I started to expand
into Indonesia to get all the rich Indonesian tai-tais who wouldn’t
blink an eye to have a procedure done. So life was really good.
So
what do I do with the spare cash. How do I spend my weekends?
Typically, I’ll have car club gatherings. I take out my track car, with
spare cash I got myself a track car. We have car club gatherings. We’ll
go up to Sepang in Malaysia. We’ll go for car racing. And it was my
life. With other spare cash, what do i do? I get myself a Ferrari. At
that time, the 458 wasn’t out, it’s just a spider convertible, 430. This
is a friend of mine, a schoolmate who is a forex trader, a banker. So
he got a red one, he was wanting all along a red one, I was getting the
silver one.
So what do I do after getting a car? It’s time to buy a
house, to build our own bungalows. So we go around looking for a land
to build our own bungalows, we went around hunting. So how do i live my
life? Well, we all think we have to mix around with the rich and famous.
This is one of the Miss Universe. So we hang around with the beautiful,
rich and famous. This by the way is an internet founder. So this is how
we spend our lives, with dining and all the restaurants and Michelin
Chefs you know.
So I reach a point in life that I got everything
for my life. I was at the pinnacle of my career and all. That’s me one
year ago in the gym and I thought I was like, having everything under
control and reaching the pinnacle.
Well, I was wrong. I didn’t
have everything under control. About last year March, I started to
develop backache in the middle of nowhere. I thought maybe it was all
the heavy squats I was doing. So I went to SGH, saw my classmate to do
an MRI, to make sure it’s not a slipped disc or anything. And that
evening, he called me up and said that we found bone marrow replacement
in your spine. I said, sorry what does that mean? I mean I know what it
means, but I couldn’t accept that. I was like “Are you serious?” I was
still running around going to the gym you know. But we had more scans
the next day, PET scans – positrons emission scans, they found that
actually I have stage 4 terminal lung cancer. I was like “Whoa where did
that come from?” It has already spread to the brain, the spine, the
liver and the adrenals. And you know one moment I was there, totally
thinking that I have everything under control, thinking that I’ve
reached the pinnacle of my life. But the next moment, I have just lost
it.
This is a CT scan of the lungs itself. If you look at it,
every single dot there is a tumour. We call this miliaries tumour. And
in fact, I have tens of thousands of them in the lungs. So, I was told
that even with chemotherapy, that I’ll have about 3-4months at most. Did
my life come crushing on, of course it did, who wouldn’t? I went into
depression, of course, severe depression and I thought I had everything.
See
the irony is that all these things that I have, the success, the
trophies, my cars, my house and all. I thought that brought me
happiness. But i was feeling really down, having severe depression.
Having all these thoughts of my possessions, they brought me no joy. The
thought of. You know, I can hug my Ferrari to sleep, no. No, it is not
going to happen. It brought not a single comfort during my last ten
months. And I thought they were, but they were not true happiness. But
it wasn’t. What really brought me joy in the last ten months was
interaction with people, my loved ones, friends, people who genuinely
care about me, they laugh and cry with me, and they are able to identify
the pain and suffering I was going through. That brought joy to me,
happiness. None of the things I have, all the possessions, and I thought
those were supposed to bring me happiness. But it didn’t, because if it
did, I would have felt happy think about it, when I was feeling most
down.
You know the classical Chinese New Year that is coming up.
In the past, what do I do? Well, I will usually drive my flashy car to
do my rounds, visit my relatives, to show it off to my friends. And I
thought that was joy, you know. I thought that was really joy. But do
you really think that my relatives and friends, whom some of them have
difficulty trying to make ends meet, that will truly share the joy with
me? Seeing me driving my flashy car and showing off to them? No, no way.
They won’t be sharing joy with me. They were having problems trying to
make ends meet, taking public transport. In fact i think, what I have
done is more like you know, making them envious, jealous of all I have.
In fact, sometimes even hatred.
Those are what we call objects of
envy. I have them, I show them off to them and I feel it can fill my own
pride and ego. That didn’t bring any joy to these people, to my friends
and relatives, and I thought they were real joy.
Well, let me
just share another story with you. You know when I was about your age, I
stayed in king Edward VII hall. I had this friend whom I thought was
strange. Her name is Jennifer, we’re still good friends. And as I walk
along the path, she would, if she sees a snail, she would actually pick
up the snail and put it along the grass patch. I was like why do you
need to do that? Why dirty your hands? It’s just a snail. The truth is
she could feel for the snail. The thought of being crushed to death is
real to her, but to me it’s just a snail. If you can’t get out of the
pathway of humans then you deserve to be crushed, it’s part of evolution
isn’t it? What an irony isn’t it?
There I was being trained as a
doctor, to be compassionate, to be able to empathise; but I couldn’t. As
a house officer, I graduated from medical school, posted to the
oncology department at NUH. And, every day, every other day I witness
death in the cancer department. When I see how they suffered, I see all
the pain they went through. I see all the morphine they have to press
every few minutes just to relieve their pain. I see them struggling with
their oxygen breathing their last breath and all. But it was just a
job. When I went to clinic every day, to the wards every day, take
blood, give the medication but was the patient real to me? They weren’t
real to me. It was just a job, I do it, I get out of the ward, I can’t
wait to get home, I do my own stuff.
Was the pain, was the
suffering the patients went through real? No. Of course I know all the
medical terms to describe how they feel, all the suffering they went
through. But in truth, I did not know how they feel, not until I became a
patient. It is until now; I truly understand how they feel. And, if you
ask me, would I have been a very different doctor if I were to re-live
my life now, I can tell you yes I will. Because I truly understand how
the patients feel now. And sometimes, you have to learn it the hard way.
Even
as you start just your first year, and you embark this journey to
become dental surgeons, let me just challenge you on two fronts.
Inevitably,
all of you here will start to go into private practice. You will start
to accumulate wealth. I can guarantee you. Just doing an implant can
bring you thousands of dollars, it’s fantastic money. And actually there
is nothing wrong with being successful, with being rich or wealthy,
absolutely nothing wrong. The only trouble is that a lot of us like
myself couldn’t handle it.
Why do I say that? Because when I start
to accumulate, the more I have, the more I want. The more I wanted, the
more obsessed I became. Like what I showed you earlier on, all I can
was basically to get more possessions, to reach the pinnacle of what
society did to us, of what society wants us to be. I became so obsessed
that nothing else really mattered to me. Patients were just a source of
income, and I tried to squeeze every single cent out of these patients.
A
lot of times we forget, whom we are supposed to be serving. We become
so lost that we serve nobody else but just ourselves. That was what
happened to me. Whether it is in the medical, the dental fraternity, I
can tell you, right now in the private practice, sometimes we just
advise patients on treatment that is not indicated. Grey areas. And even
though it is not necessary, we kind of advocate it. Even at this point,
I know who are my friends and who genuinely cared for me and who are
the ones who try to make money out of me by selling me “hope”. We kind
of lose our moral compass along the way. Because we just want to make
money.
Worse, I can tell you, over the last few years, we bad
mouth our fellow colleagues, our fellow competitors in the industry. We
have no qualms about it. So if we can put them down to give ourselves an
advantage, we do it. And that’s what happening right now, medical,
dental everywhere. My challenge to you is not to lose that moral
compass. I learnt it the hard way, I hope you don’t ever have to do it.
Secondly,
a lot of us will start to get numb to our patients as we start to
practise. Whether is it government hospitals, private practice, I can
tell you when I was in the hospital, with stacks of patient folders, I
can’t wait to get rid of those folders as soon as possible; I can’t wait
to get patients out of my consultation room as soon as possible because
there is just so many, and that’s a reality. Because it becomes a job, a
very routine job. And this is just part of it. Do I truly know how the
patient feels back then? No, I don’t. The fears and anxiety and all, do I
truly understand what they are going through? I don’t, not until when
this happens to me and I think that is one of the biggest flaws in our
system.
We’re being trained to be healthcare providers,
professional, and all and yet we don’t know how exactly they feel. I’m
not asking you to get involved emotionally, I don’t think that is
professional but do we actually make a real effort to understand their
pain and all? Most of us won’t, alright, I can assure you. So don’t lose
it, my challenge to you is to always be able to put yourself in your
patient’s shoes.
Because the pain, the anxiety, the fear are very
real even though it’s not real to you, it’s real to them. So don’t lose
it and you know, right now I’m in the midst of my 5th cycle of my
chemotherapy. I can tell you it’s a terrible feeling. Chemotherapy is
one of those things that you don’t wish even your enemies to go through
because it’s just suffering, lousy feeling, throwing out, you don’t even
know if you can retain your meals or not. Terrible feeling! And even
with whatever little energy now I have, I try to reach out to other
cancer patients because I truly understand what pain and suffering is
like. But it’s kind of little too late and too little.
You guys
have a bright future ahead of you with all the resource and energy, so
I’m going to challenge you to go beyond your immediate patients. To
understand that there are people out there who are truly in pain, truly
in hardship. Don’t get the idea that only poor people suffer. It is not
true. A lot of these poor people do not have much in the first place,
they are easily contented. For all you know they are happier than you
and me but there are out there, people who are suffering mentally,
physically, hardship, emotionally, financially and so on and so forth,
and they are real. We choose to ignore them or we just don’t want to
know that they exist.
So do think about it alright, even as you go
on to become professionals and dental surgeons and all. That you can
reach out to these people who are in need. Whatever you do can make a
large difference to them. I’m now at the receiving end so I know how it
feels, someone who genuinely care for you, encourage and all. It makes a
lot of difference to me. That’s what happens after treatment. I had a
treatment recently, but I’ll leave this for another day. A lot of things
happened along the way, that’s why I am still able to talk to you
today.
I’ll just end of with this quote here, it’s from this book called Tuesdays with Morris, and some of you may have read it. “Everyone
knows that they are going to die; every one of us knows that. The truth
is, none of us believe it because if we did, we will do things
differently.”
When I faced death, when I had to, I stripped
myself off all stuff totally and I focused only on what is essential.
The irony is that a lot of times, only when we learn how to die then we
learn how to live. I know it sounds very morbid for this morning but
it’s the truth, this is what I’m going through.
Don’t let society
tell you how to live. Don’t let the media tell you what you’re supposed
to do. Those things happened to me. And I led this life thinking that
these are going to bring me happiness. I hope that you will think about
it and decide for yourself how you want to live your own life. Not
according to what other people tell you to do, and you have to decide
whether you want to serve yourself, whether you are going to make a
difference in somebody else’s life. Because true happiness doesn’t come
from serving yourself. I thought it was but it didn’t turn out that way.
Dr.
Richard also delivered another speech to a group in a church sharing
the same experiences as above, adding his experience with God: “Trust in the Lord your God with all your heart – this is so important.”
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In an imaginary world a kiss would signify the end of sexual tension and the
beginning of a relationship. In college, it means somebody's horny.
In an imaginary world, "I really like spending time with you" and "you're
cool" mean I REALLY like spending time with you and you ARE cool. In college, it
means "will you fuck me?"
In an imaginary world, holding hands is the first sign of true love, in
college it means someone is too drunk to stand on their own.
In an imaginary world the guy buys dinner and a movie and kisses you
goodnight at your front door. In college, there is no such thing as a dinner and
a movie and at the end of a date, most guys want a hell of lot more that a kiss
goodnight.
In an imaginary world, men aren't afraid to admit their feelings. In
college, if you ask them what they want or why they kissed you they respond,
"Why do you think?" Refer to number one for definition.
In an imaginary world, sleepovers are sleepovers. Just that. In college it's
a fuckfest or pretty close to it.
In an imaginary world the guy might call you the day after. In college,
you're lucky if he acknowledges your presence when you walk by. Or if they do
call back, refer to number one again, for the reason.
In an imaginary world even gorgeous guys are nice. In college, cute guys are
asses, unattractive men are desperate, and nice guys finish last.
In an imaginary world, sex is sacred and special. In college, it happens
every night between drunk strangers, who don't even know each others names. IT
ALWAYS SEEMS MEANINGLESS TO AT LEST ONE OF THE PARTNERS!
In an imaginary world, men have only one girl, chickie, babe, woman. In
college, you ARE the only one, except for, Jodi, Jean, Alisha, Sara, Laura, Liz,
Christy, Carrie, Jen, Mary, Katie, Jocelyn, Lynda, Alyssa, Jessica, Cory,
Rachel, Heather
Thomas Edison tried two thousand different materials in search of a
filament for the light bulb. When none worked satisfactorily, his
assistant complained, “All our work is in vain. We have learned
nothing.”
Edison replied very confidently, “Oh, we have come a
long way and we have learned a lot. We know that there are two thousand
elements which we cannot use to make a good light bulb.”
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Jerry was the kind of guy you love to hate. He was always in a good
mood and always had something positive to say. When someone would ask
him how he was doing, he would reply, “If I were any better, I would be
twins!”
He was a unique manager because he had several waiters who
had followed him around from restaurant to restaurant. The reason the
waiters followed Jerry was because of his attitude. He was a natural
motivator. If an employee was having a bad day, Jerry was there telling
the employee how to look on the positive side of the situation.
Seeing
this style really made me curious, so one day I went up to Jerry and
asked him, “I don’t get it! You can’t be a positive person all of the
time. How do you do it?” Jerry replied, “Each morning I wake up and say
to myself, Jerry, you have two choices today. You can choose to be in a
good mood or you can choose to be in a bad mood.’ I choose to be in a
good mood. Each time something bad happens, I can choose to be a victim
or I can choose to learn from it. I choose to learn from it. Every time
someone comes to me complaining, I can choose to accept their
complaining or I can point out the positive side of life. I choose the
positive side of life.”
“Yeah, right, it’s not that easy,” I protested.
“Yes
it is,” Jerry said. “Life is all about choices.
When you cut away all
the junk, every situation is a choice. You choose how you react to
situations. You choose how people will affect your mood. You choose to
be in a good mood or bad mood. The bottom line: It’s your choice how you
live life.”
I reflected on what Jerry said. Soon thereafter, I
left the restaurant industry to start my own business. We lost touch,
but often thought about him when I made a choice about life instead of
reacting to it. Several years later, I heard that Jerry did something
you are never supposed to do in a restaurant business: he left the back
door open one morning and was held up at gunpoint by three armed
robbers.
While trying to open the safe, his hand, shaking from
nervousness, slipped off the combination. The robbers panicked and shot
him. Luckily, Jerry was found relatively quickly and rushed to the local
trauma center. After 18 hours of surgery and weeks of intensive care,
Jerry was released from the hospital with fragments of the bullets still
in his body. I saw Jerry about six months after the accident. When I
asked him how he was, he replied, “If I were any better, I’d be twins.
Wanna see my scars?”
I declined to see his wounds, but did ask him
what had gone through his mind as the robbery took place.
“The first
thing that went through my mind was that I should have locked the back
door,” Jerry replied. “Then, as I lay on the floor, I remembered that I
had two choices: I could choose to live, or I could choose to die. I
chose to live.”
“Weren’t you scared? Did you lose consciousness?” I
asked. Jerry continued, “The paramedics were great.
They kept telling
me I was going to be fine. But when they wheeled me into the emergency
room and I saw the expressions on the faces of the doctors and nurses, I
got really scared. In their eyes, I read,
‘He’s a dead man.’ I knew I
needed to take action.”
“What did you do?” I asked.
“Well,
there was a big, burly nurse shouting questions at me,” said Jerry. “She
asked if I was allergic to anything. ‘Yes,’ I replied. The doctors and
nurses stopped working as they waited for my reply… I took a deep breath
and yelled, ‘Bullets!’ Over their laughter, I told them, ‘I am choosing
to live. Operate on me as if I am alive, not dead.”
Jerry lived
thanks to the skill of his doctors, but also because of his amazing
attitude. I learned from him that every day we have the choice to live
fully. Attitude, after all, is everything.
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Twenty years ago, I drove a cab for a living. One time I arrived in the middle of the night for a pick up at a building that was dark except for a single light in a ground floor window.
Under these circumstances, many drivers would just honk once or twice, wait a minute, then drive away. But I had seen too many impoverished people who depended on taxis as their only means of transportation. Unless a situation smelled of danger, I always went to the door. This passenger might be someone who needs my assistance, I reasoned to myself. So I walked to the door and knocked.
“Just a minute,” answered a frail, elderly voice.
I could hear something being dragged across the floor. After a long pause, the door opened. A small woman in her 80′s stood before me. She was wearing a print dress and a pillbox hat with a veil pinned on it, like somebody out of a 1940s movie. By her side was a small nylon suitcase.
The apartment looked as if no one had lived in it for years. All the furniture was covered with sheets. There were no clocks on the walls, no knickknacks or utensils on the counters. In the corner was a cardboard box filled with photos and glassware.
“Would you carry my bag out to the car?” she said. I took the suitcase to the cab, then returned to assist the woman. She took my arm and we walked slowly toward the curb. She kept thanking me for my kindness.
“It’s nothing,” I told her. “I just try to treat my passengers the way I would want my mother treated.”
“Oh, you’re such a good boy,” she said.
When we got in the cab, she gave me an address, then asked, “Could you drive through downtown?”
“It’s not the shortest way,” I answered quickly.
“Oh, I don’t mind,” she said. “I’m in no hurry. I’m on my way to a hospice.”
I looked in the rear view mirror. Her eyes were glistening.
“I don’t have any family left,” she continued. “The doctor says I don’t have very long.”
I quietly reached over and shut off the meter. “What route would you like me to take?” I asked.
For the next two hours, we drove through the city. She showed me the building where she had once worked as an elevator operator. We drove through the neighborhood where she and her husband had lived when they were newlyweds. She had me pull up in front of a furniture warehouse that had once been a ballroom where she had gone dancing as a girl.
Sometimes she’d ask me to slow in front of a particular building or corner and would sit staring into the darkness, saying nothing.
As the first hint of sun was creasing the horizon, she suddenly said, “I’m tired. Let’s go now.”
We drove in silence to the address she had given me.
It was a low building, like a small convalescent home, with a driveway that passed under a portico. Two orderlies came out to the cab as soon as we pulled up. They were solicitous and intent, watching her every move. They must have been expecting her. I opened the trunk and took the small suitcase to the door.
The woman was already seated in a wheelchair.
“How much do I owe you?” she asked, reaching into her purse.
“Nothing,” I said.
“You have to make a living,” she answered.
“There are other passengers.”
Almost without thinking, I bent and gave her a hug. She held onto me tightly.
“You gave an old woman a little moment of joy,” she said. “Thank you.”
I squeezed her hand, then walked into the dim morning light. Behind me, a door shut. It was the sound of the closing of a life.
I didn’t pick up any more passengers that shift. I drove aimlessly, lost in thought. For the rest of that day, I could hardly talk.
What if that woman had gotten an angry driver, or one who was impatient to end his shift? What if I had refused to take the run, or had honked once, then driven away? On a quick review, I don’t think that I have done anything more important in my life. We’re conditioned to think that our lives revolve around great moments. But great moments often catch us unaware—beautifully wrapped in what others may consider a small one.
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