Two Men of Same Birthday! And Two Simple Lifes!

In the above photo, by now, I hope you would recognize me and Esther (in the middle), then on Esther's right is Grace, her sister, and on my left, Eddie, i.e. Grace's husband. In English, it's called Brother-In-Law (some corrected me and say it should be Brother-Out-Law in this case), while I prefer the Chinese way of saying it, i.e. we simply call each other's first name, and address each other as Brothers! What you may find it funny (or even amazed) is that Eddie and  I are of the same birthday (20th April). Now you may want to check around your friends and relatives and see if any of the sisters have married to their husbands who share the same birthday! We don't need to explain everything in life, neither are we capable of doing so. Though, we can certainly enjoy the fun of it, the fun of being part of the unexplained phenomenons in life!

Eddie's purpose of being here, like Grace, is to "come and see me". Also, more important, is to accompany Grace to return home (Hong Kong) as she has been here for more than 3 weeks. While Eddie, her dutiful husband, on the first day of the Easter holidays, to squeeze into a long haul flight coming all the way to be here in Vancouver the very first time for a few days, didn't really see much of the city and going to leave this evening! Lady Grace, you know how lucky you are? This also makes me think what's the (real) meaning of life: Eddie's life is all about his family. He works so hard and sacrifices to keep his family members happy!

Like most people at the same age in Hong Kong, Eddie was not given the opportunity to receive advanced education. They need to work extremely hard, and to work from bottom up, and be loyal, dedicated and great integrity to earn his today's senior management position. Of course, it also depends on who you are working for and repeated strikes of luck, careful choices and decisions, you then are able to swim through the ups and downs and survived various challenges and uncertainties in the past 3.5 decades. Then, their biggest achievements are that they raised a couple of kids, and a saving that can keep their retirement self-sustainable, with (social) respect! Eddie spends most of his time working at the office, as well the homework, i.e. the works that he see needed fixes at home. His biggest enjoyment is his walks at the back hill of where he lives and once a week, a dim-sum tea session with Grace and the kids. He has planned for his retirement in about 4 years' time and he seems satisfied with it. Life can be so simple! 

The Chinese philosophy guided that "If you expect little, less you will be dissatisfied! If you expect nothing, then you will never be dissatisfied!" (Save the debates of who is in-charge of life and whether life should be lived pessimistically or optimistically!) I agreed and echoed that there is a lot of merits if we can "Keep Life Simple!" Keeping life simple doesn't equates to a dumb life, as our life can still be filled with joy and fun. However, if we can keep it simple (or at least less complex), our mind is at greater ease and peace! Even when we are among life crisis and challenges, if we can simply take them as our daily life (or part of the process that we have to go through), we seek immediate agreement with the situation and "live with it", we then feel the solidness of ourself's own existence.

Life is full of joy and fun! Life is simple! Life is simpler than you think it is!