On the 28 of Jan 2012, my wife and I escaped a major tragedy by just a few seconds. At 2am+, we were traveling along Fort road, going home from a movie. Suddenly, our car just stalled on the road for no reason. Suddenly, in less than five seconds, two cars collided at high speed in front of us. One of the cars (a red taxi) flipped over towards us as we watched in horror. The taxi landed less than 2 meters in front of our car. It was like a scene out of ‘Final Destination’.

I got out of the car and together, with some passerbys, got the driver and the passenger out of the smashed taxi. Miraculously, they had minor injuries. The two passengers in the other car were also miraculously not seriously injured.
As my wife and I stood at the side of the road in shock, we wondered, ‘if we had left the cinema a minute faster than we did or if our car did not stall, the taxi would have certainly crash landed on our car, and we may have been seriously injured or even killed. It’s times like this that you really start to think, ‘were we just lucky?’ or was it divine intervention? Why did our car stall at that precise moment?

The strange thing is that this is not the first time, I had such a close shave with death. When I was 8 years old, I was sitting on the front seat of my mum’s car as she was driving down a hill at Lucky Heights, near the east coast of Singapore. At the bottom of the hill was cross junction. As our car was going down the very steep hill, the brakes failed. My mother knew that if we had continued going straight down, we would hit on coming traffic. So she swerved the car to the left towards the houses along the road. Our car crashed through the fence of a house, flipped over and landed on the garden of someone’s house. The crash was totally smashed but mum and I escaped with minor injuries.

It’s looking back at these incidents that I believe that I have had a truly blessed life and I am so lucky to have the opportunity to continue living. Millions of people around the world have their life taken from them every single day. This is why I live everyday to the fullest and never allow myself to complain about anything. Life is short so we should not waste a second of it worrying, arguing or fighting over every little thing. This is why I have learnt to enjoy and appreciate every aspect of my life, even the tough challenges I go though.

I also believe that everything happens for a purpose. We are all here for a purpose. The most important thing is to find out what your purpose on earth is. I am so lucky that I learnt a long time ago that we are not placed on this earth to exist day to day and play small with our life. We are placed on this earth to play big with our life in our own unique way of contribution. We are all meant to leave this earth a much better place than when we found it. I have been so lucky to find my purpose at such a young age-which is to inspire and empower others to be the best they can be.

You will know what your purpose is when you find what you truly love to do. That is the clue that God gave to all of us. Find what you love to do and that is what God meant you to do. “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” (Einstein said this).