It’s generally not advised to talk about death when you’re talking about your birthday but since I spent my 46th birthday lying in a hospital bed (I had a nasty pain in my knee and thought it was gout and a mater of just taking pain killers and gout medication, but then the polyclinic doctor noticed that I had a fever and decided that I needed to be sent to hospital), I thought the topic of mortality was worth visiting.
It was probably not a coincidence but on 25 November 2020, one
of soccer’s greatest players, Diego Maradona died of heart failure. The
following day, when I switched onto my social media, I discovered that Mr.
Ameerali Jumhaboy, former Chairman of Scotts Holding had passed away. While I
was by no means close to the late Mr. Jumhaboy, we knew each other, attended
the same talks at Institute of South Asian Studies (ISEAS – where we both gave a
French Ambassador a hard time to making a big deal of Iranian nuclear proliferation
but turned a blind eye to Israel’s obvious disregard for nuclear treaties).
Then on the day that I got discharged from hospital, I got the news that my Dad
had to be admitted into hospital for an operation. Social media feeds on
Saturday also announced that FC Kholi, the first CEO of Tata Consultancy had
died. Then, at the time of writing, I’ve just seen the news that Mr. Terry Hsieh,
CEO of Zappos Group passed away on my birthday. He was 46.
So, with the death and illness of people who had somehow
touched my life, either from personal contact or from their very reputations,
while lying on my hospital bed, was a timely reminder of the fact that life is
fragile. Sure, FC Kholi and Ameer Jumhaboy were old men and at the age where
dying is an expectation. Sure, Diego Maradona didn’t exactly live a healthy lifestyle
after his playing days. However, the point remains that men who were giants in
their respective fields died and when you’re someone lying in a hospital bed,
in the middle of a pandemic, reading about all these guys dying, you’re bound
to start thinking a little.
For me, my delight was the fact that my daughter, who had turned
21 two weeks before seemed psychologically prepared for my incapacitation. She
called her mum in Vietnam and kept in touch by text to get updates on how I was
progressing. She wanted to know if I had eaten and how much phone battery I had
and whether she needed to fetch me at discharge.
Quite often, we forget that we’re frail beings. We are also
egotistical beings, who tend to create a personal narrative around ourselves.
Somehow, our role in the success of this and that gets bigger while we down play
the failures. If one has achieved a modicum of success, this process of
developing a self-centred narrative gets worse. I have an acquaintance who is
the habit of telling his staff that “If all of you collapse, I’ll still thrive
but if I collapse all of you better worry.”
While I can appreciate the machismo of the sentiment, my acquaintance
doesn’t quite realize that he’s underlying a personal failure. He’s forgotten
about his own mortality and failed to prepare his people for the possibility of
his demise. If he collapses, so does everything else around him.
Let’s take the example of the late FC Kholi, who was by all
accounts very successful. However, he was aware of his mortality and built a
business that could outlast him. Tata Consultancy Services was in the position
to pay him tribute on his death because in life, he had seen to it that Tata
Consultancy Services would thrive without him.
As I’ve said in an earlier posting, running an organization is
like being a parent. You have to prepare people for the eventuality of living
without you. I’m glad my kid showed that she was more than ready to manage
without me. If I have become “useless” to her very survival, it’s a good thing
because she’s ready to face the world without me.
The second point that lying in your hospital bed does is to
make you appreciate the important things in life. Yes, your work is important
because you need to earn a living and because, well hopefully it gives you some
meaning in life. However, is any job worth killing yourself over?
Simply put, businesses can always replace you. First it was
the reality of cheaper labour from China and India. Now, it’s artificial intelligence.
Why, for example do you need five certified professional accountants looking through
a set of bank statements over several months when a machine can do the job in a
few minutes?
I still hear of too many people who think being overworked
is a badge of pride. Sure, if you’re in your 20s and you can pull all night
assignments 24-7, it’s a sign that you’re paying your dues and willing to work
hard (one of the points that broke my first marriage). However, if you’re still
doing that in your forties, it’s probably a sign of great inefficiency at the
expense of your personal health.
Sure, its important to earn a living and to be able to
provide for the family. However, that should not mean that one should still
work without sleep in order to maintain one’s salary as a regular thing, you
have to question the value of the job. For example, if you inform an employer
that you’ve just been hospitalized and show him the medical leave certificate
and you get greeted with all sorts of comments at 1045 at night about how you’re
causing problems, then surely it’s a sign that you are better off working as a
ditch cleaner rather than dealing with a businessman who celebrates personal incompetence.
We are human and we need to accept and prepare for our fragility
as much as we enjoy celebrating our victories. Failing to acknowledge this will
only cement our personal failures.
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