So, a friend that I haven’t spoken to messaged me on Facebook last week, this was in the midst of exams and so I didn’t reply him. I have known this guy for more than 5 years now. He was one of the good guys, always funny with his sarcasms and seemed carefree all the time. When I met him initially, he was fairly quiet. He was always stuck in his own work and the impression that you get off him was neither here nor there which really means he didn’t left an initial impression.

When I was in high school, I knew quite a lot of people.During then, I was always living in the moment. I couldn’t care what the next day bring or where I was going to go in the future. I was also always really sleepy in class. I would go to bed at 1 am and wake up at 6 am. I honestly can’t remember what I was doing, staying up so late. This was the pre-smartphone era and I wasn’t on my laptop all the time. I don’t read novels during the semester. I think I may have been reading Archies comics actually. Wow, I have gone so off tangent. As I was saying, I knew quite a lot of people. It was because we see each other in school all the time. You can’t really hide from anyone. He and I couldn’t hide from each other and so we got to know each other. Although high school has finished, this guy that didn’t leave an initial impression went on to become one of the guys I will always remember.

This guy spammed me on Facebook and asked me when I was coming back and wants to catch up. I told him I didn’t have plans to stay back in Malaysia for long this time. So, I asked him casually how are things. He then told me his dad has fourth stage cancer. I honestly thought he was messing with me for one second as he was always joking about things. Unfortunately, he wasn’t messing with me this time. His dad’s cancer has spread from the colon to his lungs. Initially, everything was okay after the large intestine was operated on but it came back and now it has got on to a very serious stage. He told me he was at crossroads and didn’t know what to do. He said he wanted to quit his studies and just work full time to support his family. I told him to keep studying because that’s what his dad would want him to do. He probably has kept this inside him for a long time now and only now was telling someone about it.

Flash forward a week later, I sat at a cafe with my own father. I missed this, I said to myself. My dad has spoken a lot of things to me since young and I figured I probably didn’t remember all of them. At this stage of my life, I realized I remembered almost every single thing he and my mum said. I may have switched off during those times but his words were inspired by events in his life and as I am now living mine, they have become part of my moral compass. Thinking back of my friend, if what’s he experiencing happened to my own father, I probably would have lost my sense of direction and like him, be at crossroads.

Flash forward a few hours later, I was folding cards as part of the table’s decorations for my sister’s wedding with my family. Mind you, folding cards is a mundane thing. It’s one of the most mundane things you can do. It was also during this time I seen my mum laughed uncontrollably for a long time. It was also during this time my dad said to me, “Fold the cards slowly, savour every moment. It can be mundane but if you find meaning in whatever you do, even the most mundane things can mean something.” I didn’t even realize I let time slip by and just folded the cards without thinking much of people in front of me. I started to fold them slower and remembered that my sister’s wedding is once in a lifetime. I don’t even know if I will get married. I started to remember things go by sometimes in a flash and we forget to spend time with people in front of us even when we are beside them.

Things happen outside of our control all the time. One day, we can be perfectly healthy. The next, we might lose whatever we deem important to us. It’s amazing how we forget that we are still breathing sometimes. For some people like my friend’s father, he’s barely breathing but staying strong to support his family. For my friend, he’s barely breathing but he was the one that took time to message me and was still joking with me, making his usual sarcastic remarks. For some of us like you and I who are breathing just fine, we forgotten that we are.

I pray my friend’s family will be alright and that his dad will be healed. As for you and I, we have our struggles in our lives. No one gets by in life without living them. I probably have lots of worries in life but if I’m always worrying about things that have yet to happen, what am I doing with things that are happening. Sometimes we think we may know about everything in life because we done it for a long time but doing something all our lives doesn’t mean that we are doing it right. The first we did in this world was to breathe from the world. Is it too late to learn again how to breathe? What do you think?