* Growing up Gabriel *
Born with 10 fingers, 10 toes and a cute button nose!
Saturday, July 22, 2006
Have you ever set your feet upon a large luxury ship and sailed across to the other end of the earth? i have often wondered what it would be like to spend 30, 60 and even 90 days on board such an awesome man-made vehicle and to live in carefree abandon like there is no tomorrow.
What if i were to tell you that all of us are like passengers on ship, one which would sail for only 90 days or so, before it hits an iceberg and sinks to the bottom of the ocean, never to be seen again by man? What if i were to tell you that this fate is for certain, there is nothing you can humanly do to affect the course of events except to secure yourself a seat on one of the limited number of lifeboats on the ship?
i can’t help but imagine two kinds of passengers on the ship (sorry for the seemingly implied parallels to Titanic the movie but it ain’t intentional, i can assure you :-) – One, the live-and-never-say-die breed who “invest” a lot of money on luxurious furnishings for their living quarters, expensive clothes and delicacies to tantalize their taste buds in every way. They are very determined to enjoy their time on the ship, since they have paid for the journey and expect it to bring them to their destination within a set period of time. Then there are the rest, who choose not to spend too much time pursuing these things because they know their time on the ship is short… They seem to have been let in on a terrible, huge secret and can now only seem to focus on one thing – to secure their place on a lifeboat and to warn the others about the impending danger.
When i was in England, one of the things i hated most about student life was having to move in and out of different accommodations several times a year! i detested having to unpack my things out of their boxes, use them for a little while before having to pack them all over again just for the Summer or Christmas holidays! In view of this, and to protect myself from greater inconvenience, i controlled myself from buying too many things, lest i accumulate more junk which would eventually end up in boxes anyway (which i’d then have to move or find a place to keep them) – You could say it was akin to having a “nomadic” mentality – keeping yourself from acquiring too much since you can’t bring it all with you anyway.
As i reflect on these two stories, i wonder how many of us have this “nomadic” outlook on life… That we are here only for a short time (60, 70, 80+ years?) and what we do now either prepare us for the future, or hinder us from enjoying the future to the fullest? Every time i read the newspapers, i can’t help but wonder why we devote so much energy and resources to planning our retirement, but not what comes after the retirement? Or why nobody asks what happens to that famous politician or movie star when he has passed away (thru cancer, or a heart attack, or a car accident…)? Why year after year we seem to be planning bigger and bigger building projects but, hey wait a minute… How long are we going to be around to enjoy these new buildings exactly??
Think about it… 90 years from now, your country will be filled with millions of people you don’t even know… Microsoft will be run by a different person. The PAP will be headed by someone you don’t yet know. Your company will probably be owned and controlled by somebody who hasn’t even been born yet.
The question is… where will you be?
