So many problems. So little time. Or so we think.

I’m sure we all have these days (or much longer) where we seem to be showered with so many problems that focusing on failure is not an option.

Challenges don’t have signal lights. There are no brake pads in life that tell us when to pause at certain decisions. Whatever we decide on, remember, failure is always an option.

So how do you deal with situations like these?

Always factor in failure as part of the equation to solving a problem. There is no shame in failing because it will always part of the learning curve.

One day, I told my staff over lunch that who they see me today as a successful clinician was a product of failure. I am not ashamed to tell that story over and over again.

In the class of 1983, I was one of those who did not pass the oral revalida. And while the rest of my class marched on stage during graduation, I was making up for the failure. The failure devastated my ego. Whatever ego was left was thrown out the window.

The question was – do I continue or do I give up? What will people say? After wallowing in self pity, I came face to face with realizing that ego never built dreams. It was the most humbling moment of my life. I needed to prove to my tribunal that they were wrong. I could do this.

The rest of my success is history. There is no other story in between except that story of failure and my becoming who I am today.

While we are entitled to failures, it’s a fair reminder that the accountability is ours. Own up to it.

My piece of advice to those who go through life’s failures, is that they are there as part of your journey are not meant to be your final destination.

It will hurt when you fail. But someday you’ll realize when looking back at these struggles, it changed your life for the better.

I wrote about surrendering a few days ago. Not because giving up is the only option. But because it’s a settling issue when the impossible is your opponent.

Then there’s believing in better outcomes. Believing even during the most uncertain times on better consequences entails two words – faith and hope.

Someone once asked me, why do bad things happen?

Pain is the greatest game changer in our lives. It reminds us that life is all about possibilities and overcoming the obstacles.

“We cannot change the cards we’re dealt with. Just how we play the hand”.

– Randy Pauch

The answer is simple, yet complicated. If life does not pose hurdles, what a boring routine we’d need to face each day.

We need to believe in the magic of miracles. They are the anchor of hope during adversity. And yes, the universe has a way of aligning life.

I get it.

No matter what you do, things just don’t work out. Most will provide the advice of “never giving up”. Yet there are times when giving up is the best option because you realize that it’s just a whole waste of time crying a river.

There are painful situations in life. Loss of a child or loved one, property or material value, job or career – they’re all part of the circle of life.

Doesn’t it suck that you’re in that situation when you know you need to let go, but you can’t, because “you’re waiting for the impossible to happen?”

Surrendering is an important decision we need to make in our lives. I’m not saying that we need to surrender at each stumble. There are just situations that letting go is the best decision we will make.

During one quiet moment, a friend’s father asked me “how much are your principles worth?”.

My initial reaction was shock.

Until he elaborated.

Everyone has a price. Even the most principled man has a price. Even heroes or saints have a price. Some of us may have not yet met that situation that made us decide on the price of our principle. We all have.

Let’s put a situation:

Say you needed 3 Million pesos badly because your father needed treatment for a disease. He has been in the ICU for the last 30 days. The savings of the family has dried up. Your family had to sell the house you live in. The loans are building up.

Your current job entails you access to vital confidential information that when revealed can bring down the business. The competitor of the company you work for knows your dilemma. Offers you 3M in exchange for that information. The life of your father or the information to the competition?

The scenario can vary from a hungry beggar who’s willing to break a law to feed his hungry and sick children or a drug addict who is willing to sell his or her body in exchange for a fix. Or the politician whose level of greed is shallow and is willing to exchange justice in order to keep up or maintain his family’s lifestyle.

If you’ve not met this challenge in your life, sometime you will. It can come either in the form of a crisis or temptation. But it will come.

For those who already have “sold” some of their “principled values”, only our conscience will dictate how we resolve them and if and when we can sleep better at nights.

We do what we need to do after thorough deliberation with our conscience.

Remember

there’s something wrong with your character if opportunity controls your loyalty.

What defines us at the end of our journey in life is not how well we lived but how we lived a life of kindness and gratefulness.

That’s the number of celebrations of life…and death of friends in 2017.

The beginning of 2018 marked the passing of the mom of a colleague. A depressing and somber mood to greet new beginnings.

I recall the story of the conversation between life and death.

Life asked death, why do people love me but hate you?

Death responded, because you are a beautiful lie and I’m a painful truth.

The cycle of life, and sadly, death, begins as soon as one is born. The older one lives in society, the more celebrations of life and death one encounters. Time has a way of showing us who and what matters in life. It also reminds us of joy of beginnings and the pains in letting go.

We all want happy moments. It is human nature to expect that. To most of us, celebrations are made up of these happy days – birthdays, anniversaries, special occasions, marriages, Christmases. Moments where “gift giving” is an obligatory event. Most of us avoid discussing death as a celebration.

I’d like to think that death, as dreary and morbid as he may seem is an obligatory event that’s worth celebrating. It provides us the opportunity to remember all the good and bad journeys of the person. It provides closure to life, no matter how short or how long it is shared with others. No matter how difficult or comfortable life was, death will always be the final book that the person wrote in his lifetime.

Albert Camus once said “there is a life and there is a death, and there are beauty and melancholy between.”