God's Will, Fate or?

Past 3 days as I drove the Princess to school, I passed by a funeral wake and looking at the expanding tentage, I guess he must be a very popular guy and my heart goes out to his family. I don't know him, will not be attending the wake yet in a sense I feel that I know him for like me, he aspires to keep fit and train hard for it. I train hard probably harder than most people since I don't have natural talents and have to work doubly hard just to keep up and sometime I do wonder, will I like him just drop dead one day while running?

Much has been said in the papers and forums about his death and whether it could have been avoided; the usual stuff - train adequately, know your limit, go for health assessments blah blah blah and all easier said than done and so I shall not go into that. Personally I think his death was unavoidable. For that matter, all death. Some people like the Taoist believe in the 生 死 线 where life and death are pre-destined. Some will call it God's will, fate, destiny and some said karma.

Me? I subscribe to the belief that there is a higher order somewhere and everything that happens, happen for a reason and one cannot escape it. So if it is time to go, it's time to go. Nothing you do can prevent it - not swimming for 5km every day, not training for 7 days a week. If it's not your time to go, nothing you do will make you go. Just ask the guy in New York who fell 47 floors and live. Or closer home, an ex-colleague's child who fell 6 floors from his HDB kitchen window and escapes with just a fractured leg. In contrast to this, just look at how many people die each day from seemingly innocent incident? We laugh at all these silly way that people get kills but yes it happens. Time up that's it!

So to all those who are having second thoughts about participating in endurance events or even taking up sports to keep fit - please go ahead and continue. No need to listen to those well meaning people who asked you to stop because of incidents like these. More people die in traffic accidents and air plane accident annually than people who die doing sports but that doesn't mean we stop taking planes and cars or crossing the roads. People have die from eating fish, fishball, sweets. Does that mean we should stop eating these? Just remember to train well for it and take care and more importantly, ensure that your family is provided for, just in case..... cos you never know. somehow somewhere someone might be waiting....