Life of Duty

 

" I slept and dreamed that life was joy,

   I awoke and saw that life was duty.

   I acted, and behold duty was joy."

   Rabindranath Tagore

A religious teacher was asked how best to cope in taking care of a difficult and 'toxic' parent or person under one's care. The reply can best be summarised by the above poem which I stumbled across. 

The questioner found it difficult to comprehend how acting out of duty can bring joy especially if the parent/person is not someone one respects. Wouldn't just being bound by a sense of duty makes one acts begrudgingly.

The teacher explained that when pride and ego takes over, one questions the worthiness of the person being cared for. One thinks one is doing a great service or granting a huge favour in serving them. One becomes a judge of another's character, whether the recipient is good enough for spending time and effort on. That is a lot of arrogance whereas caregiving needs one to be humble.

As to how it will bring joy, the teacher suggested that joy will be felt eventually without too much thinking and reasoning. It is like a call of duty which one is meant to carry out. I think he implies it is like one of the caregiver's life purposes. Just doing it unconditionally would bring joy.

By the same reasoning one's duty to a spouse is similar. Constant thinking how a spouse falls short of one's expectation strains the relationship. Again it is ego and pride at play thinking " I deserve better ". 

Well I did pick up a lesson on arrogance and garnered some self awareness.

Baby boomers' childhood imprint

 My daughter having moved into her new home came back to clear her room in my house. By the end of the day she dumped half a dozen big garbage bags of stuff while another handful await donation to the Salvation army. She literally threw 70 % of the things in her closet and room. When I started to peek into the bags she stopped me immediately just to ensure I didn't retrieve something . "No hoarding Mum" she warned.

Why do many baby boomers find it difficult to part with items? Well it has to be habits cultivated from childhood. Just recall the frugal lifestyle when we were young. As a vain little girl I really looked forward to Chinese New Year because that was the only day in a year when we got to wear new shoes and dresses meaning one pair of shoes and one or two sets of dresses have to last for the whole year. Colour pencils had to be used until their length was too short for little fingers to hold, uniforms worn until the edges of the pinafore frayed and toys were not bought but gifted once in a blue moon by a visiting relative from afar. Hence every item was precious and kept until it was worn out. Since there wasn't much to possess, one shelf in a family shared cupboard was sufficient for each child. 

Well as the post WW2 economy boomed and upon reaching adulthood, we baby boomers enjoyed the income undreamed of by our parents. It unleashed the freedom and thrill to buy up things like property, cars and all kinds of electrical and consumer stuff. Yet we find it difficult to discard hence the accumulation. There are quite a few reasonings contributing to this habit.

We think we will fix every broken down item. Remember shoes with broken strap had to be sewn back and soles replaced before the next pair at CNY. My husband who grew up in a sprawling unkempt kampung house will keep every broken down electrical appliance as the components may be needed to repair another. 

The more space you have at home the more the accumulation. In the midst of nagging at the clutter created by my husband at our backyard, I did sense that he was intuitively recreating the old kampung house  environment where he had a happy childhood. Thus I had to close one eye just to let him keep his Linus security blanket.

Then nostalgia will keep us from parting with mementos or any item which will remind us of pleasant times. Hence stacks of birthday/mother/father day cards and photo albums of family holidays occupy closets. One must understand many of us never celebrated our growing up birthdays. Our parents were just too busy or too poor to remember every child's birthday. Family outings were rare not to mention family holiday. Thus celebrating our birthdays at adulthood and family holidays are new found treasures.

We also keep items because we harbour hopes. We keep an ill fitting dress because we hope we will be disciplined enough to fit into it. We keep novel after novel hoping one day we will read all of them. 

Lastly there is the fear of making the wrong decision when we toss something in the garbage bag. Baby boomers fear regrets and were "raised to avoid failing at every turn". Think of times when you looked for something only to recall with regret you have thrown it away. Even if it rarely occurs that unpleasant feeling has to be avoided. Thus it is risk free to keep an item.

So millennias must understand its all about stability and security which baby boomers are trying to grasp since young. As pathetic as it sounds, childhood imprint is really impactful.

Cause and Effect- Bounce right back

 

Everything has a cause and effect. The current standoff between doctors/specialists and the insurers in Singapore  is a case in point . The former questions the later on their criteria to create a panel (of doctors/specialists) whose fees will qualify for insurance claims by insured patients (where the 5% co payment cap of $3000 still applies). The later retorts with examples of excessive fees and over treatment charges by unethical doctors which resulted in huge insurance claims and the need to increase premium.

I remember my one day stay in a private hospital to investigate a fainting episode led to an insurance claim of $6 thousand by the doctor which I didn't have to pay a cent. I also recall sharing a room with another patient who was checked in for some detailed investigation of a medical problem. On the morning of discharge I eavesdropped and heard her specialist saying she was fine . However he pointed out that one of the results from the blood test (in probably a host of items being tested) had shown that it bordered on the lower average range. The doctor asked whether she wanted to consult another specialist for further investigation over that not so ideal result. She of course agreed. Might as well right since the insurers will be paying the bill. 

One insurer cited an insurance claim where a woman stayed in hospital for abdominal hernia repair and ran up a bill of $46 thousand. Only thing was the treatment included a tummy tuck and breast augmentation  which weren't stated in the bill.

Well these unethical doctors had it good and now they bear the consequence of their own actions. Likewise the policy holders who were only too glad to accept offers of  "ultra comprehensive" care and treatment without a flinch of guilt, deserve now to pay higher premium as well as the need now to co-pay the medical cost incurred. That includes me who once failed to correct an error in the medical bill which included adult nappies which weren't even used. Well between the hospital and the insurers, I unwisely leaned on the hospital. 

Now the premium of my Insurance Integrated Plan is sky high and in a teeny weeny fraction was the effect of my past actions too.

The itch of knowledge

 

Sometime back ST journalist Rohit Brijnath wrote an article entitled 'The itch of knowledge' describing when he gets older he reflects on how little he knows. I can totally relate to that not only because the world is changing so fast that it is hard to catch up but even if the world stagnates there is still so much backlog knowledge to acquire. 

Rohit best describes it as "So few years are left and so very little is known."

In some sense it sounds very depressing. Rohit comes out with a long list of books unread, fields of knowledge like astrometry (what's that?) unexplored and languages not mastered. This triggers thoughts of my own countless list of 'to learn's ranging from Chinese (so as to be able to read Chinese literature) to some basic physics (so as to understand Hawking's Big Bang theory) to understanding the Middle East conflict once and for all. Then there is the more practical knowledge to acquire like cooking beef rendang or research on cats' behaviour to understand my cat better. This is not even considering the endless list of book titles stored in my mobile notebook that are meant to be borrowed.

Yet and it is a big YET there are endless times when inertia takes over. Inertia sometimes takes the form of being a TV couch potato or often enough the habitual binging on social media. This of course is often followed by some sense of guilt.

Rohit calls out that "there is no time to waste" cautioning that as we age we are also quicker to forget what we have learned. I guess the only way out is to prioritize  and focus on the top few regrets for not learning. 

After all harbouring too much 'needs-to-know' creates too much attachment to this world and instills too much fear of missing out on this world, when it is time to go.