Gone in a second

Something devastating happened to my family last week. We all stopped in our tracks and only one thing was important, and that was the health of my family member. No amount of money, we have soon realised, can fix the problem. No amount of connections, can ease the pain. Nothing other than prays and faith that the best outcome is all we can hope for.

As an entrepreneur I've been complacent. I have often not had enough gratitude for how far I have come and what I have achieved, nor the people who have helped me get there. The latter I can say with confidence, is not because I don't appreciate everyone around me, but quite simply, once I have conquered one thing, I am onto the next.

They say entrepreneurship is tough. It requires incredible resilience, patience, passion and a certain amount of luck - although they do say 'you make your own luck'.

I have experienced every high and low of entrepreneurship, and had my fair share of lessons. I have had good and bad employees. Honest and dishonest one's too. And of course the cunning type who have found the buzz words that seems to be so freely utilised as their equivalent of blackmail. I fortunately am not one to fall for that, and I certainly do not reward bad behaviour. My mentors taught me that earlier on, and it is something that I largely stick to.

Health, it seems, is more important than any other aspect of life, other than love. Without good health, life is unbearable and in worse case scenario, a ticking time bomb.

Faced with an incident that is catastrophic, I fell apart. It appears that I am not as strong as I thought I was, nor am I able to always see the glass half full. I found myself wallowing in the worse case outcome, not the best case - and it is not a good place to be. 

After a good nights sleep, I went back to being me. That is, the person I am most familiar with and that person always thinks about the positives and believes that miracles do happen. I started to think about solutions, not the problem and to try in earnst to get everyone on track to focusing on that 1% chance that the absolute best case would be 'our case'.

I can't begin to imagine what it is like to be in the shoes of a person who has lost something that is part of their being. It hasn't happened to me. Yes, I have had family members pass including my father. A couple of closest friends die unexpectantly, and of course, the horrific outcomes of car accidents, in particular when my brother at the age of 23 years became a quadraplegic. 

I started off life as a sickly child, and had pneumonia when I was a teenager and spent a month in hospital, then in my thirties, I had chronic fatigue. Along with a few sinus operations - that is my entire repertoire of illnesses. Nothing too harsh, or life threatening. I feel fortunate. At my age, I am pretty healthy. I complain over the pollens in the air - but other than that, I don't even get the flu or a cold.

How lucky am I?

But life can change, and this wake up call reminds me not to take life for granted. Life is meant to be lived, but there are rules and boundaries for a reason. Reaching for the stars and pushing ourselves to reach our full potential is a blessing. Waking up and appreciating everything around us, and perhaps meditating and soaking in our surrounds sometimes can give us a sense of what is real.

Importantly, choosing to do more, not just for ourselves but for others, is life changing. Something that we all can do, and it doesn't cost a thing.