A Boy Named Niven

Yesterday night before i went to bed, i was full of dejection and angry at myself, mulling over what has transpired over the part which i am in charged of yesterday during the Montford Boys Town project. It was a total fiasco and i guess i got too ambitious...

Being too ambitious, i went out of touch with reality

This afternoon after i came back from my friend's funeral, i realized how superficial and stupid i was. Truly, attending funerals can really change your perspective of life.

My friend, a young lively 17-year-old has passed away the evening before yesterday after he met with an accident coming back from Miri to Sibu. Truthfully, i did not know him very well because our relationship was more of a senior-junior kind of relationship in our uniformed organization. Occasionally we did meet up in band and maybe talked a bit about the Boys' Brigade but that was that.

Nonetheless, i do feel sad. A 17-year-old is way too young, especially someone with so much potential and so much life ahead of him. Parents should never bury their children.

No parents should ever have to suffer the agony and pain of burying their children

Attending his funeral made me realize that just how easily we get carried away with the fickle little things in life. Every day we go about life as if life will go on forever. Yeah.. occasionally, we do talk about death but when we talk about death we always thought that death is somewhere obscenely far in the future. It has never, never occur to us that death might come very moment, that we could die anytime, right this time, right this very moment to which we fill our activities in to the brim.

It never occur to us that death could come at this very moment of life with which we fill the activities to the brim

His death really puts everything in my life into a different perspective once more..

so what's so special if you fail in your program ?
so what's so special if you fail in your examination ?
so what's so special if you didn't get the things you want in life ?

I do hope that, as fickle as life is, as short as our time is on earth, i hope i can make and bring a difference to the people around me so that the flame of my passion for life will not pass out with my passing. Death is not the greatest loss of life, the greatest loss is what dies in us while we are still alive.

Not everyone dies, because not everyone has learn to live

I hope that one day, i won't be as blind, or as stupid, or as trivial as to think that i can take life for granted, that i can simply plow ahead in life to achieve my dreams but ignoring others on the way, that i can simply hurt my friends and the people around me and not bearing the consequences.

I hope that one day, i will grow to a day when i can say to myself on my deathbed that, "boy.. i am lucky. I did a lot of things in such a short time. God has been good to me." For our blessings and who we are today, let us know that we owe God and the world our gratitude.

And i do hope one day, sometime in my funeral, there can be an inscription that boldly says,"shed no tears for me, my legacy live forever." =)

"Shed no tears for me, my legacy lives forever"

In his lifetime, Niven taught me everything he knew about being lively and active in life,
In his death, he taught me everything i used to know about appreciating every moment of life.

Once, i know a friend and a boy called Niven...



Now, i still do... and forever will be.

A song dedicated to you, Niven,

Farewell, my friend... i am going to miss you