What in Life is Most Valuable to You?

With all the ongoing trends online, and the innumerable issues and topics of concern flooding the news feed on social media, I hope I wrote the headline good enough to at least get you to read beyond this line of content. The time you spend wasting on the things you value is never really wasted, is it? Well, it doesn't really matter now if you agree or not for as long as you carry on reading the whole article. =)

On a more serious note, let’s go back to the question and be more specific. Besides your time and your faith, what in life do you value most now?

Is it Money? Love? Health? Legacy?

Surely you must already have a quick and easy answer. I mean it's your life and your business after all. But if I may once again, share this much talked-about essay from a couple of months back, these were the words of someone the world considers an epitome of success. He, with his intellect and genius for innovation, founded what is now regarded as one of the world’s largest information technology companies. This is the rumored deathbed essay of Apple's legendary co-founder - the late Steve Jobs. His last words about how the “non-stop pursuit of wealth will only turn a person into a twisted being, just like me.” 

"I reached the pinnacle of success in the business world. In others’ eyes, my life is an epitome of success. However, aside from work, I have little joy. In the end, wealth is only a fact of life that I am accustomed to. At this moment, lying on the sick bed and recalling my whole life, I realize that all the recognition and wealth that I took so much pride in, have paled and become meaningless in the face of impending death. In the darkness, I look at the green lights from the life supporting machines and hear the humming mechanical sounds, I can feel the breath of god of death drawing closer… Now I know, when we have accumulated sufficient wealth to last our lifetime, we should pursue other matters that are unrelated to wealth… Should be something that is more important: Perhaps relationships, perhaps art, perhaps a dream from younger days. Non-stop pursuing of wealth will only turn a person into a twisted being, just like me. God gave us the senses to let us feel the love in everyone’s heart, not the illusions brought about by wealth. The wealth I have won in my life I cannot bring with me. What I can bring is only the memories precipitated by love. That’s the true riches which will follow you, accompany you, giving you strength and light to go on. Love can travel a thousand miles. Life has no limit. Go where you want to go. Reach the height you want to reach. It is all in your heart and in your hands. What is the most expensive bed in the world? Sick bed… You can employ someone to drive the car for you, make money for you but you cannot have someone to bear the sickness for you. Material things lost can be found. But there is one thing that can never be found when it is lost – Life. When a person goes into the operating room, he will realize that there is one book that he has yet to finish reading – Book of Healthy Life Whichever stage in life we are at right now, with time, we will face the day when the curtain comes down. Treasure Love for your family, love for your spouse, love for your friends.
Treat yourself well. Cherish others."

I, like many of us mere mortals look up to Steve Jobs for all his accomplishments and success. But reading between the lines of his last words, I can tell that even a man of his stature and intellect couldn’t rid himself of something most humans live and die with --- REGRET.

You see, the problem we perpetually face is this: you and I are so consumed with our desire for money, fame, recognition and glory, that we’ve forgotten what is fundamental to man. We spend our days in toil and drudgery that we forget why we are working so hard in the first place. Society has programmed us to measure our happiness and success by the size of our bank accounts, and the words scribed under our name plaques. Wealth. Title. Legacy. We have been terribly misled to believe that those things matter most.

But do they really?

A father chases promotion after promotion, spends over 12 hours in the office, and no longer gets to join his family for dinner. He comes home and his kids are already asleep, so he goes straight to his laptop and spends another 6 hours working on emails and endless reports. He and his wife don’t cuddle before bed. As he gets higher to the top of the corporate ladder, he sleeps less and less, skips more and more meals, misses more family dinners and PTA meetings ‘til his kids barely notice when he’s gone. He lives out of his suitcase, taking one business trip after the next, but never getting to take his family to the beach for vacation. Eventually he tires out, and his body starts to show it.

A mother scrimps on her vitamins and refuses to buy medicine when she needs it. She can well afford it, but between her job at the office, and the chores to be done at home, she can’t make the time to see a doctor. She is too busy shuffling her job and her household chores to take a minute to rest. There are just too many dishes to be washed, to many clothes to be laundered, too many meals to prepare. Her work is never done, and her health will just have to wait. 

We get so caught up in the flurry of life that we lose sight of the things that truly matter. Only to realize that at the end of it all, you may be left with a big, fat bank account, but with no memories of your son's first soccer game, or your daughter's dance recital. Or worse, you and your wife may never see the day your son proposes, or your daughter walks down the aisle. Never get to see your grandchild's first steps. Remember, no matter how much money we have, there can never be any amount of wealth enough to afford trading off a sick bed. 

I am not, by the way, here to try and be a life coach. I am far from being old and wise. I am still as young and crazy as I was yesterday. Crazy enough to want to institute the change Steve Jobs desired to influence the world with, on his deathbed. I may not reach the whole world, but I would like to at least inspire my fellow Pinoys to revisit our perspective on what we really regard most valuable in our lives now. Perhaps it's time we treated ourselves well and valued our health and that of the ones we cherish more? 

It is by this inspiration, that I commission and oblige myself to introduce to you MyPocketDoctor, the Philippines' very first telemedicine application bringing the future of healthcare in the country, today.
MyPocketDoctor revolutionizes providing immediate healthcare as never before—an instant 24/7 initial doctor-patient contact anytime, anywhere to not only give knowledge about their health status but also through a doctor's advice, it may provide the only medical care they have that their current time, area or circumstance usually do not permit immediate and easy access to. Which could mean all the difference between preserving life and limb, or losing it. 

So I ask you once again, what now do you value most in life? 

Cherish your family. 

Cherish your relationships. 

Cherish your health. 
Cherish life. 

These are the things that money can never buy, and define your true wealth.

For inquiries and more information on My Pocket Doctor, please click HERE.