The best advice I ever received in my life came from somebody who didn’t even know he was giving it.

For a long time, in my desire to become a better person, I had wanted to follow the example of some friends who did wonderful community work. It seemed to me they exemplified exactly the quality that was dismayingly absent in myself—a caring for others which was not only a principle in abstraction but a translation into real action, that is, into the actual work of visiting old folks’ homes, orphanages, hospices and doing useful work there, such as helping to bathe, clean, feed the sick, old and disabled.

There was a friend—we will call her Miss T—whose generous giving to the children of an orphanage gave new definition to the frequently used word in public expressions of praise and appreciation—‘unstinting’. Miss T, in all the years of her charitable work, never stinted on whatever was hers to give, whether of time ( she had a full-time job, as well as an old parent to take care of), energy (she sometimes had fainting spells which would make her weak for days) and resources ( she earned a modest salary).

There was a special quality Miss T showed which I particularly noticed simply because I had none of it—the ability to be in calm, benign, even loving contact with the worst signs of the human body’s dereliction when it has sunk into the last stages of disease or dementia. On the few visits to old folks’ homes with her, I had seen her gently and patiently clean old, wasted bodies soaked in their own detritus of smells, stinks and stains. On one occasion, she asked me to do something for her—I think it was to hold a bowl containing some vomit—and I suddenly ran out of the hospital ward, did my own agonised expectoration in the toilet, left and never plucked up enough courage to see Miss T again.

But over the years, a vague sense of unease, bordering on guilt, remained with me about this repugnance for physical squalor that was preventing me from showing the humanitarian spirit I admired so much in others. It was something I knew I couldn’t overcome.

One day, I was having lunch with a friend, when I suddenly told him my problem. I remember he paused long enough in his enjoyment of his favourite char kuey teow to say impatiently, ‘Don’t be stupid. Forget about being a third rate social worker and concentrate on being a first rate writer!’

That was more than twenty years ago, and I’m still taking his advice. It took me that long to realize that to be a better person meant making the best use of whatever gifts one possesses, not lamenting about what one doesn’t.

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About Vignettes...

A continuing flow of little, readable pieces that will constitute what I feel is an important 'legacy of values' to leave behind. Read more about Vignettes...