SINGAPORE: A 31-year-old cancer survivor recently opened up on Reddit about the three major life lessons he learned through his battle with the disease.
In his post on r/askSingapore, he shared that he was diagnosed with lymphoma in late 2018 and spent around six months in and out of the hospital for treatment.
He described how challenging this period was, especially since, during his chemotherapy, his mother was also diagnosed with breast cancer. Fortunately, her cancer was at stage 0, requiring only surgical removal.
As he dealt with his own health struggles, he couldn’t help but notice his friends moving ahead in their careers and hitting new milestones, which made him feel a bit left behind.
Despite feeling stuck, he found a silver lining in his situation: the unexpected hiatus gave him a chance to step back and reflect on life.
Most “friends” you make don’t matter.
During his cancer treatment, he revealed that most of the people he used to hang out and have fun with didn’t even bother to visit him. They would just post a quick “get well soon” message on Facebook and then move on with their lives. “It feels fake as hell,” he said.
“You want to keep those who genuinely care for you, not just someone you can have fun with ….Figured I was wasting my time with them so I just cut them off and it’s less stressful now since I don’t try to keep up with everyone’s life. As an additional perk, I get to make new like minded friends and learn to discern who’s good and bad for me.”
Your work/results/KPI don’t matter when your health is bad.
Another important lesson he learned was that it’s perfectly fine to set boundaries at work and put your well-being before career advancement.
He expressed, “Learn to take a stand and say “no” when work is getting ridiculous. It’s okay to ‘lag behind’ your peers in terms of the corporate ladder. In the end, life is a marathon, not a competitive sprint among your peers.”
Don’t know if you want to/should do X and Y? Just do it.
The final lesson he picked up was that life is far too short to let excuses stand in the way of your dreams. He realized that constantly postponing the things you’ve always wanted to do could lead to regret if unforeseen situations, such as illness, later prevent you from seizing those opportunities.
“My life has completely changed. I quit the “zai nan” life of just playing video games or watching anime only during my free time. I just go out and start doing things I’ve always made excuses for back then,” he went on.
“For example, I wanted to try MMA back then but I was afraid of getting injured, signed myself up for a class a few months after I recovered and had tons of fun with it.”
“I wanted to learn Japanese so I can do a solo trip to Japan but I doubted myself, signed myself up for a class and did a solo trip 2 years ago and had fun. Anytime I said ‘man I oughta do something..’ I really kept it in my list and try to follow through it if I can.”
“So if anything, my life has improved post cancer. Call it an ultimate character development arc.”
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