Life: Purpose and Meaning

Towards my 65th birthday, I felt so great that I had survived the three-year period golden rule after retirement although 60 year retirement was already unbelievable for an ill-fate life like me.  

As a countryman, with little knowledge of life and health, I had been unhealthy raised and often got sick when I was young and had been through many serious sick though out my adulthood.  

When I was in my late twenties, I was deadly sick with Hepatitis. The doctor ordered me to absolutely lie in bed till recover.  Only a week after being diagnosed the disease, my situation was on the edge of death.  My mother and relatives had already booked the Wat (temple) and prepared for my funeral. Fortunately, after a month of intensive medical treatment, I somehow survived. But yet, the consequence of most Hepatitis patients would end up with liver cancer in a period of 15 years at most. So, after I fully recovered, I applied for a life insurance believing that I might not live long. 

But I lived to correct my insurance money but survive yet many years afterwards, with risky health and another life insurance, which ended up with correcting another insurance money.  

Then came another deathly illness in 2015 when I got severe pain, but I was not sure where the pain came from.  A team of doctors diagnosed that the cause might be intense nerves and weak muscle. I had been under treatment for two months in and out the hospital.  Finally, one of a doctor whom happened to be my former student's husband recommended that I should seek the second opinion from his teacher in Bangkok. 

The new diagnose came out that I had bad joint and might need hip-replacement.  So I had to be scanned by MRI technology and submit the result to doctors at a military hospital in Bangkok.  After a doctor there looked at the MRI report, he told me that my  hip joint was damaged and two choices were offered for me to choose : operation or medication.  

I chose the medication , however a week later I had to hire the ambulance back to Bangkok because I was to sick that was not allowed to be on the plane. While travelling to Bangkok I had to get pain killer shots whenever I was awaken.  

At about 50 kilo meters to the hospital, the doctor who accompanied us found that I had no pulses and my wife and the doctor decided to return back to Ubon Ratchathani, our hometown. 

While the ambulance bumped a big hole in the street, my life resumed!  (I will talk about how I felt while I was on the edge of death later) Thank the hole!

The ambulance turned around again and headed to the hospital.  That changed my life and destiny up to now.   

A three-year golden rule after retirement are (1) Keep on your usual habits, except for going to your old office and work, (2) Take on your new normal life and atmosphere, and (3) Hope and aim for life achievement still.  

To keep on your usual habits means  whatever activities and exercises you have been doing before you retirement, you must keep doing just like before your retirement, except for getting dressed and going back to the office and work. 

To take on your new normal life and atmosphere means any changes of your life, you need new normal life to begin with.  Although keeping on your usual habits is the first golden rule, but off course the aims of doing the same habits will be different.  Take one of my habit for an example, reading a book. Before my retirement, I read a book to get more ideas and information to teach my students, but reading a book after my retirement, I will use ideas and information to write a blog or to share my views in facebook-live.  The same activity is being done (reading a book), but with different objective. This is what I call new normal life.  

To hope and aim towards high achievement means that you must have some meaningful hope and aim to look for to keep life going.  If you have something to live for, your life will be more meaningful that that meaningful life is the future tort you are looking for every minute, hour, day, year, and year to come.  Without hope, there is no life. 

This is only hope and meaning of everyday living, but what is the whole life hope and meaning?  Where are human being coming from and what are their functions and duties on earth. Are we here on earth just to live, to eat, work, succeed, and then die.   

Then, what is the different between dying today and dying many years from now.

This is what I would like to discuss and share as a lesson learned on earth in my next writing, and many other blogs to dome

Note one: October 1, 2023.

Saman Asawapoom