I was immersed in Prem Rawat's latest book Hear Yourself — How to Find Peace in a Noisy World when I heard that one of our nation's former top footballers, Serbegeth Singh, passed away suddenly after a cycling trip.
Besides being a football maestro, Shebby, as he was popularly known, was also a sharp football commentator on television. One week he was talking about the English Premier League, one week later he was gone! The same with Ross Yusof, an equally popular radio deejay and football pundit, who just snapped out of this world about a month before the footballing Serbegeth.
Their demise, or every demise of people whom I know or admire, is often difficult to swallow, especially when they're relatively young as I always feel that once a person passes on — that's it. Nothing more can come out of that person any more, be it words of wisdom, advice or love. It's the final curtain.
On that score, it was coincidental that I was reading the very chapter on making the most in life that 65-year-old Prem, a US-based motivational speaker and philanthropist, had always taken pains to expound upon.
He pens: "We know for sure that there was one day you arrived in this world and there will be another day when you leave. You can't change that, but every day between those two points you can change what you feel and what you experience of this world."
Or, where he puts it even more simply: you came into life through a door in one wall and you will leave through a door in another.
I had met Prem, who had been raised in the foothills of the Himalayas in India, more than a decade ago when he came to Malaysia on one of his many flying visits (he's also a pilot) to give motivational talks. In a five-minute conversation with him, he bowled me over with his pragmatic vision of life and how to live it to the max.
His latest book attempts to amplify that one should be grateful to be alive and to make full use of every minute or second of our existence. In this, he said that the arrival of breath in our life is not conditional. Day after day it comes to us without making an appointment, without passing judgment.
"No money can buy the ability to breathe, so how rich does that make us? We are in possession of something priceless," he adds reflectively.
Alluding to the story of Aladdin and the Magic Lamp, where a genie would grant wishes to the person who rubs it, Prem presses on the point that we should stop wasting precious time and start rubbing the lamp of our lives.
Emphasising the preciousness of life, Prem says, "All our life is lived in today, right now, this second. This is because you can't live in yesterday, we can't live in tomorrow as yet.
"Today is where the magic happens and today is the place we can truly feel peace, joy and love. It's where we should be: present in the present."
Highlighting the need to prioritise, Prem says there is a "gang of thieves" that comes to steal our time and attention in life. And in the present day, these "distractions" include social media technologies or apps.
Prem asks: "But, who opens the door to these thieves? We do! We bring the outside world into ourselves. Often, it's exciting and rewarding to encounter new things, people, and information — that's part of learning, after all."
On the other hand, he says that we have to stay in charge of the doorway to our mind and heart because if we were to allow just anyone and anything in, we would become an accomplice to the theft of our own time!
Other people, he adds, may be the catalysts, "but we are the main source of our agitation, confusion and distraction". Additionally, he says that we are also the main source for us to experience joy, clarity, focus and inner peace.
American singer Michael Bolton of Soul Provider fame describes the 260-page book, which is available locally, as having inspired him with a practical approach to finding peace within, "rather than seeking it in this crazy world" as "Prem Rawat's insights into life provide the answers I have sought for decades". I needn't say more.
