Phases of Life & My 2 Fathers

I have now entered into phase 3 of my life span in this Earth.

In phase 1, will be “to grow and to learn” from age 0 till age 21. To put it in other way, it can also be called “the Richer Life” phase. In this particular phase of my life; I am expected to enrich myself during this period of time.

In phase 2, it is for “to work and to sustain”. I would prefer to be called it as “the Wholesome Family Life”. This will be from the age of 22 to 50. In this period, I will work; and from the work earned income, I am expected to support and sustain my family and fulfill my duty to my parents as son, to my wife as husband, to my siblings as brother and to my children as The Father. 

In phase 3, I would call it as, “The Meaningful Life”. It is a time for material-wealth creation tapering-off and most importantly, it is a period for spiritual noble quest. Since the transformation from phase 2 to 3 is quite drastic; and from the lesson that I have learned from my 2 fathers, I have broken this phase 3 further into: 3a, for pre-retirement; 3b, for post-retirement; and eventually phase 3c, for spiritual quest, for wisdom and enlightenment.

My 2 Fathers

My 2 fathers taught me a very important lesson in living life meaningfully, for phase 3.

Both my Father and Father-in-law are of age 80 this year. Both are also born in the Chinese zodiac Rat year.

I guess, it is my past good deeds or Karma, that I am fortunate to have been their son and son-in-law.

I have learned a very valuable lesson from both of them. It is after doing some reflection, that, I have broken phase 3, further, into 3A, 3B and 3C.

The lesson that I have learned is that, from the red-hot phase of phase 2; one just cannot suddenly jam brake and stop working altogether.

 My Father, an oil palm factory Foreman which supervised a crew of maintenance technician; he officially retired at the age of 55. After a well-deserved short break; he continued his post-retirement (3b) by working as a Steam Boiler Man, with a gut health drink maker. He continued working in this capacity, with a much lesser responsibilities and workload till the age of 72.

Till now, he has been blessed with good health and has not spent a single night in the hospital bed.

On the other side of the family, my Father-in-law worked non-stop till the age of 75. His last designation is General Manager, and also a shareholder, owner of a metal Stamping factory. From 2011, till to date, and it is unfortunate, that, he has made several hospitalization  night’s  stay and need many medical procedure and prescription to treat and cure all the sudden onset of bodily sickness and aches.

His medical bills are running into tens of thousands, and the family now has to employ a maid to care of him as Parkinson’s disease is also creeping in real fast. Because of the fear of falling over, he now spent a lot to time lying in bed.

For his bodily health, I am not too concern and can accept that as a form of old age; however it is his accelerated mental health condition that worried me most.

 It is a shock to me, to see, how fast his mental capacity degenerated within this last few years (2011 to 2015). Due to his early days of active involvement in political life; the only thing left for him to look forward daily, that he still cherished, is the 2 hour of reading the newspaper, to keep up on what is happening around him.

However, recently he has started to get dis-interested also in reading newspaper altogether as he could not string together the meaning of the sentences and paragraph per se. His mental faculty and capacity has indeed regressed.

 I suspect that, he has exhausted his mental reserve energy and fatigue has set in. Moving forward, I guess, I can do only wish him, “may you be well and happy, always”. 

In summary, my Father has a beneficial period of “warm-down(3b)”, and life is certainly a meaningful life to him now. 

I am determined to follow his foot-step; that is…doing work that does not too over-demanding on my CPU and kick-off my 3a (now), later in 2-3 years time (3b) and after that 3C.