Use things, love people, live simply
LEAVING A LEGACY: What I learnt from a good man and his widow…
Trustee-head of Media, Publicity and Fundraising, OrphanCare Foundation says once children in institutions reach the age of 14 to 18, they have very little chance of being adopted.
“It will take a lot of patience, but eventually, they will settle down.”
She said there were many reasons why children were left in orphanages in Malaysia.
“Although some of these children have families, they are unable to live with their families due to their parents’ inability to look after them because y of several reasons, including poverty, being in trouble with the law or in jail, being a danger to the child, too ill, unmarried or an inability to take care of a disabled or ill y child.
“They need to find adoptive parents who will give them a proper
MY friend Soo Ewe Jin, executive editor of The Star, passed away on Thursday Nov 17 after four bouts of cancer over 17 years.
I first knew him as the doting husband of my Malaysian Business (MB) colleague, Angeline Lim, during my 1990-1994 stint with that magazine, when it was still part of the New Straits Times Press group.
I always found Ewe Jin quiet and gentle. Angie, on the other hand, was tough on my writing as she waded through my convoluted sentences, dubbing me “wordy” while mercilessly slashing my prose. We stayed in touch over the decades.
They both chose to live lives that were intentionally non-materialistic. Many of you will know that the deluge of love and respect toward Ewe Jin continues unabated. In one of the eulogies at his wake and pre-funeral services at Trinity Methodist Church in Petaling Jaya, I heard a penetrating statement: “Ewe Jin chose to live simply so that others may simply
home or they will be left in the orphanages until they reach 18 and be forced to leave to fend for themselves.
“Studies consistently demonstrate that young people raised in institution have much poorer outcomes than their peers raised in families and are at much greater risk of unemployment and homelessness, sexual exploitation, trafficking and even suicide.”
She said of the 3,054 parents who expressed interest in becoming adoptive parents with OrphanCare, only 785 couples made it through to the interview round. live!”
He was a hyper-successful journalist, who proactively lived modestly. Also, I never perceived a dark streak to his personality. In my opinion, he was a thoroughly good, kind man who chose to live simply, help silently and write profoundly. Although I will never be as good or as influential a writer as Ewe Jin, through the guidance and help of Angie and my other ex-colleagues, I won a couple of press awards during my fruitful MB years. One of those was a Malaysian Press Institute (MPI) award for economic and business writing that came with a cash gift of RM1,500.
Back then, I was repaying residual credit card balances on my United Kingdom credit cards, which I had run up while living in England throughout most of the 1980s.
Well, sometime around 1993, I was having a teh tarik and roti canai with Angie outside the Berita Publishing and NST offices. It was soon after the award.
I told Angie that the MPI prize might be used to pay part of my outstanding credit card balances. She knew I wanted to settle all my bills quickly but still advised me to spend my prize money on something tangible that would help me commemorate the win. Angie suggested a computer.
I took her advice and bought my first desktop PC, which jumpstarted my after-work-hours writing. It was a piece of life-enhancing advice.
Her husband’s passing and my conversations with Angie these past few days have reminded me of their different brands of wisdom, which osmotically conveyed two life lessons:
THE importance of using things and loving people, not vice versa; and,
THE terrible stress unbridled spending causes, and the wisdom of living simply, well below our means.
Ewe Jin and Angie taught me those lessons by being authentic and by living the way they chose. Their legacy lives on in their sons, Kevin and Tim, who as young men today will avoid many of my mistakes half a lifetime ago!
In George S. Clason’s personal finance classic The Richest Man in Babylon is a section that describes my earlier years: “Youth is ambitious. Youth would take shortcuts to wealth and the desirable things for which it stands. To secure wealth quickly, youth often borrows unwisely. Youth, never having had experience, cannot realise that hopeless debt is like a deep pit into which one may descend quickly and where one may struggle vainly for many days. It is a pit of sorrow and regrets, where the brightness of the sun is overcast and night is made unhappy with restless sleeping.”
I know what that’s like! A life choice I observed in Ewe Jin was his uncommon wisdom of living way, way below his means to reduce personal financial stress and to free up resources to help those in financial need.
Therefore, my plan is to elevate my adherence to that principle in honour of Ewe Jin’s memory. Might you, as a start this Sunday, consider doing the same? rajen@RajenDevadason.com
Twitter@RajenDevadason