How much time do I have?

Unfortunately mortality rate is 100% and life prognosis is death. Retire young and enjoy life while you can!

How much time do I have? Can life be immortal? Should I be filling up life with working hours, borrow more debt, and buy more stuff? Where does a person go when he/she dies?

Is there any person in this world who doesn’t fear death?

These are all the questions I have been asking since I was a 10-year-old kid. I first encountered death when I was 10. My great uncle died from a heart attack when he was 65 years old. I was asking mum when a person died, where did he/she go?

Mum looked at my bewildered eyes and said ” It all depends on which God you believe in.”

I was puzzled and it was freaking insane that life after death depended on which God you believed in!

Most of us fear death

The older I grow, I start to realize most of us fear death. Whether you are a 20-year young chap or a 90-year man, when a human-being encounters sickness and dying, we all hope we have that little extra time to live for another day or another week.

As a practicing doctor, I had encountered numerous deaths in my practice. All my dying patients always wished they had more time to spend. When we were young, we chased after money and when our time was almost up, we would spend all our money to chase after a finite time.

But life prognosis is death and our mortality is 100%, we all will die one day, sooner or later. Take advantage of today than tomorrow because you will never know what happens tomorrow.

You only have 9 free years in your life

If you are expected to live up to 78 years old, it is very disheartening to know that after your sleeping time, education, working years, eating, watching TV, shopping, etc etc, you are only left with 9 years to do other stuff in life! On average, a human being spends 91000 hours ( if 8 hours per day, that equals to about 42 years of working life!) to work. And the worst, you spend almost one year of your life in traffic, that equals to 8760 hours!

Consumerism blinds our eyes

I wake up at 6 am in the morning, finish my quick breakfast, send my kids to school, go to work and come home at 7 pm.

And likely I would be called to attend cases in the hospital and spend another 1-2 hours in hospital late evening almost every day before Malaysian MCO. I spend almost 10-12 hours every day in the hospital ( half of my everyday life) to earn the money that half of it eventually belongs to someone else.

Actually I don’t need a big grandiose home, a big fat-ass car or fancy branded clothes and watches like others. Why am I trading half of my life to work so hard??

A lot of people think the one who dies with the most toys wins. We work hard to earn more, MYR15k salary is not enough and we hope to get MYR25k per month. By the time we earn MYR25k, we buy more stuff and toys and we borrow more to live more extravagantly.

Consumerism blinds our eyes. Trading your life in exchange for money to buy toys is the worst thing you can do in your life.

You are a dispensable asset!

No matter how important/great you think you are, you are just a dispensable asset in your company, your hospital, or your organization. You might think you are the best cardiologist, the most skillful surgeon, or the only salesman who speaks immaculate multiple languages and are the most valuable asset to your organization, you are absolutely WRONG!

There is not a single person who is indispensable in any organization. I tell my patients that if I die one day, there will be two or three new nephrologists lining up for a job interview in my hospital the next day!

You are only irreplaceable in your family! No one can replace you as a faithful son, a responsible husband, and a loving father in your family!

Conclusion

It is not the years in your life that counts, it is the life in your years. Find a balance in your work and life. Life is too precious to lose control because you only live once.

Don’t let toys and stuff blind your eyes. When you earn more, maintain your lifestyle so that you save more and retire young.