I remember 24 September 2012 like it was yesterday. It is my very first birthday lying in Santo Boromeus hospital's bed and also the third time I am hospitalized. How did I end up there? It was only because of a bowl of soto - a kind of Indonesian food - that I ate 10 minutes beforehand. I was riding a motorcycle with my friend when suddenly I feel that something is totally wrong with my body. I feel my breathing become heavier, and also a chest pain around my heart. I can feel blood is hardly pumped from my heart (which I think is a case of hypotension). Thankfully, I am actually heading to a hospital to visit a friend (and I end up getting hospitalized together, what an irony) so I go straight to the Emergency Unit.
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| Birthday in hospital (true story) |
It was the worst experience in my life. Have you ever felt your life is leaving you as you go ? At least, that is how I felt at that moment. Even though part of them is because of I panicking, but the fear, it is very much real. It was at that moment that I shouted in my heart "JESUS SAVE ME" as loud as I can. 5 minutes later, I was laying helplessly in my hospital bed feeling torn apart. It took around 3 hours for me to just stand back at my two feet. I was later diagnosed as a strange case of gastritis and potassium deficiency combined together. The doctor only told me to go home, but for fear's sake (yes it is indeed a traumatic experience) he gave the option to stay at the hospital for monitoring. I took the safest choice.
As I was spending the night there with my deteriorated body, I realize how fast it is life can be taken away from a mere human. We go on thinking that we might just live until 70-ish, even to the point of "lets do stupid things while we are young", until something like this actually happen to ourselves. At the face of death, it matters not our GPA, our fame, our position, our achievements, our lover, our parents, our house, our money, that game we have not tried yet, and all of those worldly things. Do you know what I think in that split-second ? Regrets. The things I have yet to do, and the words I have yet to say. In that regretful split-second, I pray to Him to just let me live through this. I have yet to accomplish anything ! It was then I can feel life -sort of- coming back to my body again.
Today, it has been almost 12 months since the event. Lots of things happened in between, and I still have yet to do all the things I was thinking at that split-second. However, something else happened to myself after the incident. I gradually (not instantly) lost interest in worldly goals. Positions, achievements, college degrees, and other things does not satisfy me anymore. I shifted my passion into something less worldly, something that cannot be separated by death, something that is eternal. Achieving something did entertain me for a certain period of time, but afterwards I would feel.. "so what?". Sometimes, I hear people say that they are fighting for their own self-satisfaction. I am beginning to question are there even such a thing called self-satisfaction? It is like trying to fill in a bottomless pit.
When death knocks on our door, what will our answer be ? Can we answer it like Paul, an apostle in the new testament, who answered, "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. (2 Timothy 4 : 7)" ?
There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death.
