What A Simple but Weird Daily Practice By My Neighbour Taught Me About Life

Hey everyone, I've been wanting to write about this for a long while now, and I'm glad that I found a platform and community to share my thoughts that is as wonderful as Steemit. I hope you learn something from this.

In my country, our newspaper consists of several different sections, including sports, world news, local news etc. However, there's a rather peculiar section of our newspaper that lies hidden in one of the sections that no one really reads. I'll talk more about it later on.

I live in an estate where the majority of residents are elderly and senior citizens who have been living here almost all their lives ( yes my estate is pretty old). My neighbor, Mr Lee is a giant of a man in his 70s, living next door with his wife and occasionally, his grandchildren. He is well-versed in Mandarin and local dialects, but doesn't speak a word of English.

Now, recently I noticed something unusual about what my dad does every night without fail, which he has apparently been doing for the past few months now.

My dad, every single night before he goes to bed, places the daily newspaper outside Mr Lee's door, and every morning, the same set of newspapers would be returned, folded neatly, and placed outside our door.

If at this point, all this doesn't seem weird to you, then read on, because this is where it gets interesting.

One day, I asked my dad "Dad, why do you always place the newspapers outside uncle (how I address my neighbors) door?"

"Oh, he wants to have a look at one of the sections of the newspapers." "Why doesn't he buy his own set then?" "Well, because he only wants to read a small part of the newspaper."

Turns out, the section that is hidden-and-everyone-ignores-except-for-Mr-Lee is the obituaries section. The obituaries section feature the names,faces and dates of people who've recently passed away. That got me curious. Why would he want to read the obituaries section, and only that particular section?

My father explained that it was because he wanted to see if anyone he knew passed on.

A small practice, that my neighbor did every night, taught me about the importance of life, and cherishing your loved ones. Life is precious, I'm sure many of you here have experienced a loss, be it recently or in the past, would know that life is unpredictable. We never know when our time in this world is up, and the fates of the people around us are similarly shrouded with uncertainty.

Many of us take people, things, and moments around us for granted, only to regret and mourn their losses. It may seem depressing, but it is the harsh truth. It saddens and scares me when I think about looking through the obituaries just to see if my classmates, colleagues or acquaintances have left for good as I grow old. Just like Mr Lee.

All of us, I'm sure have a group of people we hold dear to our hearts, people we care for. For me, they are my friends and my family. Today, let them know you love them, let them know you are grateful for their presence, and cherish them with all your heart and soul, for you never know when you're going to lose them and never see them again.