Taking Things For Granted

Hi Everyone,

I attended a memorial service for a church acquaintance who passed away at the age of 22 due to ovarian cancer. She has a bright future ahead of her and can experience marriage, successful career and other significant events of life had she survived her battle with cancer.

Are we taking things for granted? Are we spending less time with our family due to work commitments? Are our jobs completely secure? How about our health? Perhaps we do not realise it. We cannot always think that all these things are always there. It can just vanish or crumble in an instant.

Sometimes we wish that we could have done something about it when we lost it. The question is “If only I have done this”. The Bernas Chinese New Year advertisement this year depicted a son who has not gone back to celebrate Chinese New Year with his mum for a few years. His mum is living alone at her own home while the son was too focused on his friends and work. He may think that his mum is fine living alone by herself until his colleagues reminded him of the significance of family reunion during Chinese New Year. He then recalled and reminded how his mum sacrificed herself to support him. She rushed to fetch him from school after her clothes washing job. She had dinner with him no matter how busy she was. He had meals often with his mum. His mum will ask him whether he needs more rice (ka fan?). He then went back to his hometown to celebrate Chinese New Year with his mother. It was a very good advertisement.

We should cherish our family and friends and not take them for granted. Family and friends are important in our lives. They are always there when we need them most especially our immediate family. We will only realise that our family is there for us when we are away from them. It is the reason we feel homesick when we are overseas studying or migrated overseas. We want to have home cooked food. With the help of technology such as webcam, Skype and Facetime, we can chat with each other. Just like God, a family loves one another unconditionally regardless of what we do. Our fathers and mothers sacrificed a lot for us. Please spend time with our family through meals together, sports, recreational activities, movies and holiday trips. Come back earlier from work. The strength of a family is important. Please cherish our family.

Best friends and good friends are built over time. It can be childhood friends, school friends, college friends, university friends or colleagues at work. It can be someone at church or the friend that you mix with during a conference or training. It can be a friend’s friend. We can share things with friends that we cannot share with our own family. We can share our troubles and prayer points with them. I am talking here about friends that we can trust. Some people are supposedly friends with us but they leave us when we are in trouble. We can take for granted our friends who help us. Sometimes we don’t show that we know their presence there. We should also cherish them and not assume that they are always there.

Our career may not be as secure as it seems to be. We may not see the signs sometimes. Then when something happens, we only realise that it is too late. We could have done something so that that thing will not happen. We need to perform the best in our career. Something will happen if we are not careful.

We also cannot take money for granted. During my younger days, I did have a thought that money falls from the sky. Money is actually earned through our career. It is hard work. We should not gamble it away. We can spend it but not to the point that we have nothing left at the end. We should have some savings and not spend it all at once. We will have bigger issues when we are slaves to money.

Health is important as well. We thought that we are healthy. Some don’t eat vegetables at all.  Some can’t control in their intake of fried and oily food. We should always look after ourselves no matter how busy we are. We should not overwork ourselves. We should not sleep too late. We should eat 3 meals a day. We should have dinner before 10pm. We need balanced and healthy meals. We need exercise. We need to see dentists twice a year. It is too late when we find out they have heart disease, liver disease, cancer, diabetes or high cholesterol. Tooth decay and gum problems may occur without us knowing it. It happens to both young and old. It does not discriminate. Please take care of our health.

Here is the music video of S Club 7's Have You Ever:

It talks about this.

The chorus goes like this:

Have you ever lost and love somebody

Wish there was a chance to say I'm sorry

Can't you see, that's the way I feel, about you and me baby

Have you ever felt your heart was breaking

Looking down the road you should be taking

I should know, caused I've loved and lost, the day I let you go

I am a happy go lucky person but there are things we need to do to ensure we do not take things for granted. We need to remind ourselves daily on this. We should cherish our lives, our family, our relatives and our friends. We need to seek work life balance and lead a healthy life. We should not think that everything will be okay throughout our lives.

Cheers,

Rogerkoo