My Funeral

I am secretly planning for my own funeral.

Since I was a teenager, I have written poems (in Chinese, I must clarify) that began with this question "if I didn't wake up tomorrow". I always wonder. Who would be at my funeral? Who would miss me? What would I want people to say about me?...

That began my search for the question "who I am" and "who I will be" - ie the search for a self schema/possible self. It has been so powerful that I begin to lead a very goal oriented life. Not that my life is so rigid. I still stop and smell the roses. I still, along the way, change my plan accordingly because you can never predict what will happen in your life. So if life doesn't go as plan, then you change your plan. (I start with Plan A and Plan B).

It won't happen if you don't have a high private self-consciousness. I do. And I think it is important because it gives meaning to life. I rarely ask the question "why am I doing this" or "what's the meaning of life" because I know whatever I do, is the results of my self-reflections. And I find the sense of achievements from there. At least, at the end of everyday, I can tell myself yes, I have achieved something and that I have not wasted any time.

Life is a jigsaw puzzle. You will never know the full picture until you find the last piece. I sometimes think that perhaps that's the moment of enlightenment. You finally realise "Oh so that's what my life was all about". But I think that would be too late. That's why I often engage in self- searching, not so that I can achieve enlightenment earlier, but so that I can make a beautiful life for me and for people around me, especially my loved ones.

It is a waste of time to be angry about my disability. One has to get on with life and I haven't done badly. People won't have time for you if you are always angry or complaining. -- Stephen Hawking