Day 365, Still Moving

It was the last day of the year and I still somehow managed to treat it like any other day, except it did not feel like any other day, not inside.

I landed at KLIA around 9pm, got my car from the train station around 10pm, took a shower around 11pm, and by the time I was back in the driver’s seat the night had already thickened into that kind of darkness that makes highways look endless, even when you know they are not. I knew I would only reach home around 2am, which meant the crossing into 2026 would happen somewhere on the road.

I had not done my reflection for the past 3 days, and I kept telling myself I would do it, that I would close the year properly, that I would somehow not let it slip away like water, but the year still ended the way years often do, quietly, while you are busy doing something else, while you think you still have time to prepare for it.

It felt surreal that the year ended again. Unreal. Like I blinked and it happened.

And then there was that thought that came up in the middle of all this movement. In 2026 I am 39. The final 3 before 40. I do not even know what I am supposed to feel about that, but I could feel the presence of it, the way numbers can suddenly start to mean something when you are tired and alone.

Shantou, 3 Times

This was the third time I went to China this year, and every time I was in Shantou.

The first time I went, it was just to explore, “look see look see”, without much agenda, which is a funny phrase because even when you think you have no agenda, the heart still has one. It is sensing, watching, and forming impressions that you cannot always name, and I have always been like that, introspective, intuitive, relying on a kind of inner sensing, and at the same time relying on God, the way Romans 12.2 keeps coming back to me, the renewing of the mind, the quiet insistence that you cannot keep thinking the same way and expect your life to go somewhere different.

The second time I went to Shantou, I had an intention. I brought Dr. Elias and connected him to the key personnel, I tried to do something that would not just be a trip for the sake of a trip. Then the third time, a month later, which was the trip I just returned from, I went there wanting some form of outcome that could justify the cost of being away.

Before I travelled, I was extremely reluctant. I did not want to lose the precious time to end the year with my family. And yet I conditioned myself to enjoy China. 既来之则安之. When I decided to live to the fullest, I started to create value, and that part surprised me again, because I have noticed this pattern in life: When you are resisting a season, you cannot see what is the possibility. But when you embrace it, even a small opening can become a place where something meaningful happens.

Conversations That Did Not Look Important

Value comes in many forms. Sometimes it is business, sometimes it is just adding value to a conversation. For instance, there was one lady who was quite uncertain about joining my friend’s company. She told me about her company, what they do, what services they provide. I listened, and then I prompted her in a way that felt almost too direct.

“At this stage, you are still not considering yourself as part of the new company that you are joining?”

It came out simply, but when I said it, it felt like it landed in her at the right time. That was a paradigm shift moment according to her. I noticed that sincerity changes the temperature of a conversation. It is just a shift. People feel it when you are present. I think I felt it too, because in a trip like that, with a team of 8 travelling together, you start to see things you do not always see in normal life, people’s patterns, their loneliness, their hunger, their distractions, their inner wilderness.

Some of them, I could sense they needed an awakening spiritually.

There were moments when I felt the domino of what was happening was spiritual, like the root is not where everyone is looking. When a person realises life from a spiritual perspective, a lot of things stop demanding so much attention. Things do not disappear, but they shrink. The wilderness becomes less terrifying when you believe you are not alone in it.

Yet, even as I think about that, I also know how easy it is to say “spiritual” as a label and make it sound clean, when it is not clean, it is messy, it is slow, it is uncomfortable, and most of the time it is not even visible.

Being Rich and Feeling Poor

At the conference, someone said something that stayed with me.

We feel lost when we have a lot. But when we have nothing, we will be happier because there is only one goal, survive.

When I first heard it, I could feel the truth in it, the way a person can be surrounded by comfort and still feel lost, because comfort does not automatically give direction. When there is only survival, life becomes narrow but clear; When there are many options, life becomes wide but confusing, and if you do not actively choose what matters, everything starts to matter, and that is when you become tired without knowing why.

I have lived a version of that.

Before I founded Stellar, I was running a very profitable, successful company, and yet I felt extremely poor inside.

Poor in spirit. Poor in purpose. Poor in direction.

That combination is hard to explain to someone who thinks money is the missing piece, because from the outside it looks like everything is fine. But inside you feel like something is not fine, and you do not even know what you are searching for, and you keep searching anyway, because stopping feels like dying, and yet continuing feels like drifting, and it becomes exhausting in a quiet way.

That memory makes me think about younger people. Not because I want to preach to them, but because I remember the years I spent searching, and I remember how expensive searching is, not in money, but in time, in attention, in relationships, in the part of yourself that gets worn down by chasing the wrong things.

Life is short.

The worst part is not that you chased, the worst part is that you might arrive at the end and realise what you chased was not even what you wanted, and you paid the full price anyway.

Sometimes I say to myself, 不要太過執著.

Do not be too attached. Not because detachment is a virtue by itself, but because attachment can become a prison, and a prison can look like success if you do not notice what it is doing to your heart.

Letting Go, And What People Mean When They Say It

This morning in China, I had a conversation about losing things, letting go, which is something we say often in Chinese, as if letting go is a simple switch you can flip. Letting go is an art, people say. But art is not easy. Art takes years, practice and pain.

Then someone asked me a question that jolted me.

Are you willing to let go of your family and your wife?

I remember thinking, what kind of question is this, because my wife and children are precious to me, and I do not like questions that treat precious things like they are props in a philosophical conversation. But I also knew she was not trying to be disrespectful, she was trying to understand something real, something about how people choose what they choose.

I told her about missionaries in China.

I came across missionaries who are ever ready to lose their life for Christ. It is amazing to see, because in a world where many people are self-serving, it is rare to meet people willing to die for a greater cause. There is something humbling about it.

Yet, I also felt a discomfort that I did not want to hide. It is commendable that people die for Christ. But I also wonder sometimes, do they know they only have one life?

Not as criticism, but as a question that sits in me and does not settle quickly.

I used the example that came naturally to me, because I often teach my children about money and choices:

If you have RM100, you have options. You can buy item A. You can buy food. You can use it for entertainment. You can use it for whatever you want as long as it’s within RM100, but you cannot have everything, and you do not throw away the RM100 just to prove you spent it.

You choose carefully, because spending is choosing, and once it is spent, it is gone.

Life feels like that to me. We have one life, and we have many options. But we cannot have everything. So letting go, for me, cannot be for the sake of letting go. It has to be meaningful. It has to be worthy. It has to be coherent with what I believe God is asking me to do, and coherent with who I am called to be as a husband and a father.

When I say that, I realise even the word “coherent” sounds cleaner than it feels inside. Because inside, it is not clean. Inside, it is tension. Family is precious; Meaning is also precious. Sometimes the pursuit of meaning costs family time, and that cost is painful, and I do not want to pretend it is not.

Why I Still Chose to Go

Why did I go to China? It was not for money.

It is hard to say that without sounding like I am trying to sound noble, but it is true. At this stage, I have reached a kind of pinnacle in my career and ministry, and money is no longer the main thing that drives me, not because money is bad, but because money is too small to carry a human soul for long.

I am always in search of meaning, I am also in search of growth.

I want to grow. I want to explore new markets. I want to stretch beyond what is familiar. Not because I want to collect achievements, but because stagnation does something to the heart, it makes you small without you noticing.

China also interests me because I am Chinese. There is something about identity that keeps calling me. I want to know I am part of something greater, not just as a concept, but as a lived sense of belonging, of history, of roots, of the kind of continuity you cannot manufacture.

Then there is my team. I want to help my team grow. I want them to see that living only for yourself is a narrow life. It might be comfortable, but it becomes less alive. When you live for something larger than yourself, even small conversations start to matter, because they become part of a bigger thread.

In China, I felt delighted that I could add value in ordinary conversations. Not because I need to feel important, but because it reassures me that I am not just travelling, not just moving around, not just spending days, but that there is some form of contribution happening quietly.

Maybe that is enough for now.

The Part That Did Not Get Recorded

At 11.55pm, I paused my recording. I said I would come back later, after midnight, after crossing into 2026. I did not. However, I had something greater.

I had an hour plus of conversation with my wife until I reached home. That was the real crossing. Not the calendar turning, but the heart turning back toward what I was missing, toward the person I wanted to be with, toward the home that was waiting, toward the reality that even if you travel for meaning, you still ache for the people you love.

I do not know how to tie this neatly, and I do not want to. I only know that that night, on the road, with the year slipping away, I felt the weight of choices.

Weight, sometimes, is simply what life feels like when you are trying to spend it carefully.

Wishing everyone a meaningful 2026.