Don't Waste Your Life

I've been thinking about deaths. 2 deaths, in fact.

The media has been covering a lot about these 2 deaths, but definitely one more than the other. The first is the dear Anthony Yeo that so many of us in social services know so well. And of course, the other is MJ. I believe anyone who speaks the English language would have heard of him.

Just read an article in the papers 'Buy a piece of MJ', talking about how the owner of the club who were the first to sign the Jackson 5 now wants to sell the entire building brick by brick to people who want a piece of history.


People are now clamouring for MJ CD's, memorabilia, previously unpublished music, every piece of news about him, every single detail about his death. This man has fans, even when he's dead. Give him a break, will ya?

The world is, in a way, in shock.

And the other death I'm thinking about is one that is with much less fanfare and attention.

Anthony Yeo, the 'Father of Counselling' in Singapore. He devised a model of counseling that ALL of us social workers and counselors in Singapore are familiar with; the PADI model. More than that, he was a master, a student, a friend, and so much more to many others. I have not had much contact with him, except hearing him at some forums, reading his books, and watching the lone youtube video there is on him.

I remember attending the Samaritans of Singapore Suicide Awareness Forum last year, and the first line he said blew me away with its depth and wisdom. 'People who commit suicide are a special group of clients. These are people who are not afraid to die. They are afraid to live.'

Life can be such a burden that for some, death is a better option. But there are also those who live well, and who have looked through life itself so hard, that the loss of life is not really a loss. It is merely a conclusion.

As I ponder these 2 great people, powerful in infinitely intangible ways in their own fields, I can't help but ponder their lives.

There is something profound about the behaviour evoked in those who loved these two men. On one hand is an almost hysterical clamouring of whatever is leftover, on the other is a group of people who let go, albeit reluctantly.

Let's face it. While the media articles are now putting up things about MJ and his positives, this was a man who lived for himself. And towards the end of his life, we found him holding on to it with everything he had. And we know, quite certainly, that he was probably quite a tortured soul, never quite accepting himself and amassing obscene amounts of riches to fill that soul up. But food fills stomachs and clothes cover bodies; they can never fill a heart.

And you just get a sense that with all that clamouring, there is a feeling that people can't get enough him. Why? Maybe because he didn't give himself. People are clamouring for the MJ they couldn't get when he was around.

You get a feeling that the clamouring is to fill a gap left behind by a sense that this life could have been more. He could have done more. Played his 50 London comeback concerts, published his other music, brought up his children till they were of an older age. More. He could have lived more, done more. But MJ, like the rest of us, is a human being, not a human doing.

I don't want people to clamour for me after I am gone. I don't want people to feel that I could have done more, contributed more. I want people to sense that no matter how many years I lived, I had lived it to the max. I had given those I love around me; my family, friends and clients, my best.

I don't want people to 'buy a piece of Liren.'

I want people to have me, as a whole. As a whole Liren.

Will you allow me to love you, my friend, with the whole me?