Health: without it, everything is nothing
Friday, my gym day. As usual, I YM-ed Kerm late in the morning. And breaking news: he has got a mild heart attack. He said it happened when he woke up, his chest and left arm hurt, and difficult to breathe. Luckily, he took some medicine, nitroglicerine, which he always keeps, just in case his dad sufferred an attack. I was shocked. He said it might be heartburn, but he couldn’t tell. It happened several years ago, where he had EKG, blood test and all that. Nothing wrong. A person like Kerm, who is so health conscious, doesn’t smoke or drink, go to the gym regularly, eat well. How?
In the middle of the YM conversation, my sister called. My uncle just died of heart attack. Gosh. He was in his late 60s, but he had a very poor lifestyle. Stressful job, overweighted, ate almost about everything. He was sufferring from something else but then it surprised everybody that he passed away because of the heart attack. This is one of my close uncle, who was my chaperone when I studied in Bandung. I stayed at his place for a while and as a poor student, I often come to his place to ask for food, just like my other cousins who studied in Bandung.
When I picked Kerm up, we talked about his condition. He felt much better if he move. He didn’t suffer difficulty breathing when he climbed up the stairs, but felt it when he is not doing anything. That’s why he insisted to go to the gym. It worried me, but he told me that he wouldn’t do the weights. We talked about what should he do, besides visiting the doctor: catheter? CT-Scan? Being one of his close friends, of course I was worried like hell. When I did weight lifting, he was tempted but then I told him to just do stretching.
Yesterday, I had to leave the office very early because of the pounding headache. Work was extremely stressful to the point where it is not fun anymore. It was the combination of stress, not enough sleep and my depression attack. I stayed in bed for the whole day, took my sleeping pills and just slept all day. The headache was gone (but the depression stayed a bit).
It scares me that two of the people that I really care about has heart attack. Lucky that Kerm’s got the mild one. But that is not the point. The point is, it can just attack about everybody, even healthy Kerm. I told my office friend during coffee and he said, “Isn’t it scary, with our lifestyle at the moment, living in Jakarta with this awfully stressful job”. Yes, we are back to drilling mode and everybody is extremely stressed out.
Kerm had to restrict his exercises and have to be careful not to be too tired or excited. If he could get it, there is a big chance I might get is someday. Because, although I eat well and exercise regularly, I also smoke regularly, even more when I’m stressed out like right now. And I am living by myself, who will find me if I died in sleep because of heart attack?
Health is one thing you should invest at. When I look at people who doesn’t exercise, I see beer bellies and their body just shows it. When they eat all sorts of fatty food, I begin to wonder how long will they going to survive until they get some serious problems with their healths. Add stressful environment it the equation, you have a good chance to suffer some kind of disease. And what will that do? Your spouse panic. Your kids abandoned. If you die, at least your spouse and your kids will suffer the most. How many young people, in their 30s, got stroke and died? Or heart attack? Uric acid? Liver failure.
Stress is the biggest enemy in this case. I came to a point where I had panic attacks in the mornings. But living in Jakarta, working for a corporate, and I’m 40 already, don’t you need medical check up routinely? If you are stressed out, then you must seek professional attention that works for you.
Living in Jakarta, you start exposing yourself to traffic. That’s pretty stessful. Then interaction with people, contractors and work. Chasing deadlines.
And what happened if I get it? It seems to attack everybody. Or stroke. Or severe headace. Let alone those diseases, how abou things
Stressful life, stressful work and stressful way to live. We are supposed to be working in a stressfree environment. Change jobs? Same shit different company.
It all lies on us. When you have time to mingle at the coffee shop, you have time to go to the gym. Or if you can’t enjoy the gym, try walking for 20 minutes around the house.
People dies. No quietion about it. But the way we die, it is our choice. I want to have a quality life so that I don’t bother anybody. I am all alone, so I have to take every little thing curiously.
If even the healthier person like Kerm suffers it, life seems to just play around with us. Multivitamins, Vitamin-C + collagen. All vitamin we go ahead and try. Whatever to make us healthy.
Because money doesn’t mean anything when you are sick, or ill! But maybe this is also a sign from God, saying to be careful, and to not take it for granted.
Health, don’t take it for granted. Invest on health. It is worth it. Because no matter how much money you have, if you don’t have health, everything is nothing.
May 17, 2008 at 4:46 pm
You know, its strange that you should write about this now. I recently experienced something similar. The details aren’t that important, but it involved the death of two people. Overall, I was left with just a feeling of helplessness to make a difference.
It is strange that over thousands of years many people have relayed profound insight after enduring traumatic events such as:
1.) You can not completely control your own destiny no matter how hard you try.
2.) Your friends and your family are the most important things in life and everything else should be prioritized as secondary.
3.) You should live every day as your last, because it might be. You should focus on enjoying life and not get caught up in the day to day ups and downs.
4.) A lot of different religious insights, most about living life in accordance with the religion you have chosen to believe in.
Thousands of people have had these revelations and conveyed them to us. In many cases, we understand and believe in the moment. A week later, we are back to living our lives like we always have ( worrying about something at work that day, not spending time with our friends and family because of other obligations, being miserable because of something going on at that moment, etc.. etc..)
I read your post and it just makes me wonder again ” why is it so hard for us to understand what is really important and lead our lives happily pursuing those things” Believe me, I am not only talking about you, but myself and almost every person I know.
A good example: I had a friend who had a long battle with cancer and beat it. His determination to lead his life dedicated to what he thought was important was incredible right after he was diagnosed as in remission. He was sincerely convinced that the rest of his life would be lead in a different way. Two years later, his life is right back to where it was before this experience.
What is it about us that makes it so hard to realize our temporary existence and lead life to its fullest? We know it, but somehow can’t make ourselves believe it. This is one of life’s mysteries that I would truly like to understand
May 18, 2008 at 6:49 am
Bule in Jakarta: thanks for the post. Maybe it is just human nature to forget. When we are close to death, we tend to remember all the things in the past and promised to do things differently. Then when things went fine, they forgot. I’ve never been that close to death but there were some events where I decided to change (thanks that I didn’t need that near death experience!).
One thing I’ve learned is that in order to enjoy life, you have to be healthy. If you want to enjoy more, you have to be fit and have strength. In my article above, those two people are in the extreme side. One is ignorant of his health, one is very super conscious about it. Yet they suffer the same disease. This, makes me wonder about my own life. When I went to my uncle’s funeral, I just stood there and think. Despite of his bad lifestyle, he was a great and respected person. He cared about people and gave so many good advise to the young generation during my stay in Bandung (there were probably 5 of us from Medan and Jakarta living in Bandung and he and his wife was our ‘parents’ for 5-6 years). We go to his place to ask for some advise. For food. And he was always open. Never he sold his soul to politics, or tolerate corruption; at that time, he was the director of Biofarma.
And when I go to the funeral, all I saw was a body, entering the earth. That’s it. You are done. What’s left is what’s being done. And he left three strong sons, very well brought up with his idealism and values. Makes me realize that life is so short and I need to do something good while I’m alive. To others. Be meaningful to others, not creating disasters.
Kerm and his mild heart attack makes me think about another thing. A healthy person like him can still get this attack. I’m a pretty fit person, toned, care about my health and now trying be stronger in order to be able to dive better (it was proven that my legs were able to cater me when I was chasing Manta against the surge), and eat well. Yet, I suffer of other thing: depression. Living in Jakarta, I am highly exposed to stress and my company is not a very pleasant place to work at the moment. Lately, the stress and depression has affected me and this is a very easy target for heart attack. I have to change the way I work, my attitude towards my company and take things more easily. And just do my best, if things doesn’t work out, I will not stress about it. Depression, I have to learn to give all to the Al Mighty when things are out of control; it makes me much more calm. How many more years do I have, 30?
Sure I’ve promised this several times to myself. But by ‘reading’ from other people’s life, I get reminded. And to be able to read like that, one should have an open mind. If there is one thing that I’ve learned and changed lately, is to respect myself, take care of myself first than others. And so far, I’m still sticking to it. On other department….still need improvements though!
May 18, 2008 at 4:59 pm
Very insightful. I wish you the best in your new commitment.
May 18, 2008 at 7:17 pm
Thanks BiJ. I think if we look around carefully, we are being reminded. But, most of the time, we fail to see it, refuse to think about death and sickness (in some places, it is taboo to talk about these natural items)…or just too blinded with the hectic daily life.
May 18, 2008 at 9:39 pm
Parvita,
It is indeed alarming to hear this sort of story. And as you wrote, it seems always to come as a surprise.
Everything you wrote is uncontroversial. Seems like an honest account of shock, worry and extrapolation to your own situation
Everything that Bule wrote above is spot on.
One comment on all of us – I assume we are middle class people with some means. We have the resources and time for gyms, special foods and access to world class medical facilities. There are many in Indonesia, without resources, who are much more “prisoners of fate” than we. They either don’t have the resources for any prolonged medical care or are captives to the Indonesian medical services, which can be a little bit of a lottery.
A couple of points;
1. “It happens to other people - it wont happen to me”. Not as simple as that, but we all seem to think, subtlely that we are “exceptional”. Your experience brings home the reality, but it seems to quickly fade into the background as the daily stresses (real or imagined) worm their way back into the forefront of our minds.
2. Bule asks “why we don’t learn….?”. Possibility; “We don’t see as much death as people of old used to.” We all eventually have the experience of loss of parents, uncles and siblings. It used to be much more common that younger people died, e.g. in infancy, of Polio, TB in childhood, women dying in childbirth while still young etc. There were more wars and famine and hardship associated with life. Life was more precarious and death was more “in your face”. People died without knowing the reason why, in many cases. Life probably seemed much more risky, on a day to day basis. Some of us have had the terrible experience of loss of a younger person (family or friend), either by illness or accident, but that was probably a much more common experience 100 years ago.
3. Are we definitely too busy these days? Maybe the real answere is that we do not make time for reflection. With everything we have, our needs and expectations are higher. We would rather fill our time with activity or entertainment (e.g TV). Our needs are endless and generally self imposed. Therefore work, work, pick up kids, go shopping, gym, coffee – when do we ever sit back and really think about what is important and what is not??
4. I suspect that it’s a modern day phenomena that people with resources and education subconsciously believe that such efforts as diet and exercise almost guarantee a quiet death at old age. I know that’s an exaggeration. Partly built from the hype generally used to promote these ideas or diets. E.g. images and advertisements showing radiant, happy, healthy, great looking people guzzling down some super drink are all over the place.
5. We, as a generation, believe that we control more, due to advances in medicine and knowledge. E.g. with the contraceptive pill, women can reliably control their fertility for the first time since a gleam appeared in Adams eye at seeing Eve in a fig leaf. Health risk factors, such as diet and exercise and not smoking are well known – therefore by controlling those factors, are we not controlling our destiny? Hmm – not quite, eh?
6. Stress – something you cover well. You are clearly in the oil industry. It seems like you are a geologist in charge of drilling for oil. But how stressful can it be?. Is there a life or death situation like surgeons, paramedics, police and firemen face on a daily basis?? Are you trying to figure out how to get aid to people in Burma and worried about how many people will die if you cant? Do you have a child with a fatal illness, needing urgent medical attention, but no job? Are you going shopping in bagdad shopping and don’t know whether you will survive the trip?
Are all Geologists in charge of drilling operations as stressed as you?
If not, then why you feel stress?
Self Imposed?
Where are the answers? Not with me.
The answers are in the Noble Qur’an.
Life; you will not survive the experience!
K.
May 19, 2008 at 7:50 am
OK, now that is funny “Life; you will not survive the experience!’
I often think about all those in Indoensia with less than I have. Their life is so difficult and the reality of death probably much more profound. If we have little control over our destiny, they have even less due to their lack of resources.
It doesn’t mean, however, that their life is any less fulfilling or meaningful. I think, in many cases, the social bonds that they build and rely on day to day, may make them appreciate life more as well as value those close to them.
Anyway, many good points in your post.
May 22, 2008 at 7:53 am
@BiJ: the less you have, the less you expect, the more simple your life is and you are happier. Those people with less nutritions don’t know about eating well. Death. Danger, malnutrition. Healthy combined diet. Their life is from day to day: if I can live tomorrow, it’s good. They are not well educated. Tough Indonesian government don’t care about this. These poor kids will be a burden, not source, for the country.
Us, middle class people, think differently. We think more long term. We think about how when we get old, what happened if we are sick, what happens to our children if we get sick. We want our body to look good.
People deal with their life differently, I am talking about those who are fortunate to have access to internet and read my blog. And if you have time to read my blog and give lengthy answer to it while drinking coffee and smoking, you definetely have time to raise your ass and start exercising, meditating, whatever to start appreciating your health.
@K: drilling is the most stressful time during exploration. Yes, they are stressed. That’s why you find lots of them drinking like fish in Blok M. I deal with it differently. I breathe, I take pace, try to not get warped and exercise in the gym or jog.
Have the same question as BiJ: Why won’t we survive the experience? If you don’t you’ll be dead by now.
~Peace