Things that I learned in 2018 is about value of time and death

When I woke up this morning, I looked at my phone and realized it was 29^th December. I smiled widely because I recognized 2018 will be ending within three days. Then I asked myself if I learned a lot within this year or not.  

I don’t want to say I could bring out the best from 2018 because it’s the year mixed with the best and worst thing together. I had mental breakdown for four times and that was the new record in my adulthood life. I just had one or two times at most in previous years. But suffering four times is quite much and I even thought I couldn’t get through very well and believed that I would be depressing for very long time. Yeah of cos, this year makes me realize the truth of two things. Two things that I have realized is about value of time and death. Knowing we all will leave from this world without being alive makes me understand the true value of time and I totally accept that time is very limited.

We all know that time is the most precious thing in this universe but we rarely pay attention to this limited resource. When I turned 29 on my birthday, I was feeling kind of blue because I would be 30 in 2019 and if the life span of normal human being is 60 years, I would reach to half of this life span in next year. It sounded scary at first. But that is the essence of life that we will go through together. We are only getting older and older and we will not get the same time, same chance twice in life. No matter if we have the beautiful body, face or those material things, everything will fade away.

I wrote about my Bali experience in my previous article before. I would like to bring about that experience now because that was the first time I was scared a lot about death as I was very close to death. I was pulled by the rip current at Kata beach and rescued by two Indonesians. If I didn’t cry for help, if they were not swimming near me, if I was swimming a bit far from shore, I would have ended my life in the underneath of Indian Ocean. I would never have seen my family, my friends and the people I loved. I couldn’t get it over the thought that I could have died for two months. 

That was the first time I realized life is too short to take for granted. After I came back from that trip, I reflected the things that I did and I reflected the things that I want to do. People are afraid of death because no one knows where they would go after death. As the true believer in reincarnation, of cos I only want to go to heaven in next life. But we don’t have any guarantee that we all will go to heaven.  The second fact that people are afraid of death is because no one knows when they will die. No one really knows. 

Due to my work nature, I always plan for every project ahead and make sure we stick to the plan. As in the work plan, of cos there is timeline mention when we will kick off the project, where we are going by implementing that project, where we will reach after this project. Like I make plan for work, I always make my personal plan and achievement goal too. But facing the death experience, I realize that I didn’t have plan for death. As much as I have plan for being alive, I realize that I should also have plan for death too. It might sound scary, but it is truth. I tried to avoid before. But I don’t want to avoid anymore because it is unavoidable. 

In Buddhism, one saying goes “Death is nearer than tomorrow.” I lost two friends within this year and two of them were still young. Both of them passed away suddenly. I was so shocked by their deaths and it’s only two months apart between two of their deaths. One passed away due to lack of oxygen after playing football and one passed away in the fatal car accident. Both of them had lots of dreams about their life but they couldn’t make their dreams happened. As I knew them personally, I was totally lost after their deaths. They wouldn’t have known that they would leave this world forever. 

Steve Jobs said he always asked himself “if today is the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today” by looking at the mirror before he left home. I always listened to his Stanford University commencement speech whenever I was in need. It was like career bible for me. He stated three things in his speech and I was clear about first two things but the last was about death and I didn’t learn that much before I experienced those things which I mentioned above. He said “Almost everything, all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure, these things just fall away in the face of death.” That is true. This is what I learned. After facing that death experience, after losing those two friends, whenever someone asked me what was the most blessing that ever happened to me, my answer was always “knowing that I am still alive”. 

Some of friends mocked me sometimes for being too fearful about Bali experience. They always said everyone would die eventually. But I was so scared to die because I didn’t plan for that. I have full of dreams. In my life goal plan, I set up the plan as I would focus on my personal goal until 40 and I will contribute a lot to the society when I hit 40. I was aiming to fulfill my personal goal first then try to help the people in need. But realizing that I could die at any time, I switched my plan of focusing only on my well being to focusing on helping for the people that I love. I decided to make it balance. 

I also learned about forgiveness. I am extremely good at keeping memories. I always keep every memory no matter it’s good or bad. This is why I always admit that I have difficulties in letting things go. I always hold the resentment and put myself in bad mood when it’s time to let go of something. I never forgive and forget easily too. But as Steve Jobs said, everything falls behind in the face of death, I try to learn about forgiveness. 

Due to busy days, I could not read as many book as I read in 2017 but I read about philosophy, emotional intelligent and self-development articles in 2018. I tried a lot to know about my emotion because whenever I was in mental breakdown, I couldn’t control my emotion. When I read about Robin Williams who took his own life at his 60s, the famous comedian and no one have thought that he would take this own life in 2014, I realized that if I couldn’t control my negative emotions, I would do something stupid too.

That is one of the reason, I learned a lot about human emotions and philosophy. I passed out once in the office while talking to my colleague. He was so shocked cos I fell down to the floor suddenly. I was also shock because I realized that I didn’t pay attention to my health lately. I decided to take a break from working out for a month to take a rest.

2018 is almost over now. I am sure everyone has new year resolution, new goal and new dream. For me, there is only one thing that I want to happen. I don’t want to be mental breakdown frequently in coming year. I realized the things that I didn’t realize before in 2018. This year makes me a lot smarter than before. 

Well, as much as we all prepare for our life goal and dreams, we all should prepare for our end as well. We all should prepare to lose someone that we love too. We will never know when is the last time seeing them. Sometimes, they just disappeared forever before we knew.