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    Uncover Immeasurable Wealth
    Uncover Immeasurable Wealth
    Uncover Immeasurable Wealth
    Ebook215 pages2 hours

    Uncover Immeasurable Wealth

    By Danny Lim

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    About this ebook

    'Salesperson Extraordinaire' Danny Lim opens up about his difficult childhood in which abuse, abandonment and betrayal were predominant themes. He shares in this book, powerful tools in the form of his experience, knowledge and insight of more than 20 years in the insurance and financial planning industry, to help you travel far and well in your chosen career path or even your personal life.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherFaris Digital Solutions Pte Ltd
    Release dateJan 12, 2015
    ISBN9789810921330
    Uncover Immeasurable Wealth

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      Book preview

      Uncover Immeasurable Wealth - Danny Lim

      PREFACE

      People say we should let bygones be bygones; that we should forgive and forget and move on with life but for me forgiving and forgetting does not come easily. I find it difficult to forget the past or to forgive the people who did me wrong in my early life when I was so very young, weak and vulnerable.

      The die was cast then, and it is hard now to hold back the flow of events that were unfurled as a result. I wonder if I will ever be able to forgive and forget what happened to the day I die!

      For close to thirty years, anger towards those who betrayed me has been simmering within me. The best form of revenge, I always believed, was to show the people who had hurt me that I could do better than they could and that I could be a better person than they ever were! It would seem now that the anger that burned within me for so long has turned out to be a good thing -- it fueled in me the determination to achieve great things in life. Without that anger and the determination it generated to prove myself, it’s hard to say where I would be today because of my messed up childhood.

      The incident that sparked off that great anger happened when I was thirteen. At that tender age, I was left by my parents to be brought up by my uncles and aunties. I still feel sick when I remember how they washed their hands off me -- I feel again the anger, hatred, and resentment I felt then towards the people who had brought me into this world, my parents. How can I ever forget that sense of total abandonment that closed in on me when the very ones who were supposed to love, care for, and protect me gave me up so easily? The most frightening thing that can happen to any young child is to be abandoned by his parents, and that was exactly what happened to me.

      The worst part was that they were right there: my parents were there, watching the event unfold but they did nothing to save me. They were content to be spectators! They did not lift a finger to save me; they did not shout out even once to stop me, their child, from the abuse that was being dealt to me. They allowed me to be served to a pack of wolves just so they could save their own hides.

      There was nothing I could do to save myself from the voraciousness of fully-grown men and women, my uncles and aunties, when my parents had forsaken me. Yes, the betrayal by my parents has left me deeply scarred emotionally. I cannot say that I have healed from it completely even today. So perhaps it is understandable that I find it extremely difficult to forgive my parents and forget what they did to me. Even now As a thirteen-year-old boy who knew nothing of the world, I was utterly traumatized when my parents abandoned me to my fate. Nothing in my brief life up to then could have prepared me for having my parents turn their backs on me.

      As the saying goes, however, there are two sides to every coin. Knowing what I do now of human weakness and life in general, perhaps I am finally ready to see the other side of what happened all those years ago. I may finally be ready to understand my parents’ decision; perhaps I am finally ready to consider the predicament they found themselves in at the time.

      You see, I was conceived out of wedlock. My parents were only teenagers. My mother was still in school while my father had dropped out earlier. Because there was suddenly a baby on the way, they were forced by their families into a marriage that neither of them wanted. There was a lot of tension and animosity between my parents’ families. My maternal grandmother was against the marriage. She wanted my mother to abort me and then marry a rich ‘ang moh’ while my paternal grandmother insisted on the marriage. In the end, it was my maternal great grandmother who stepped in and saved my little life. Being the matriarch of the family, no one dared disagree when she ordered my parents to marry.

      After the wedding, my mother moved into the home of my paternal grandparents. The family house was only a flat that was already packed to the brim with twelve persons living there including five uncles and four aunties. Naturally, no one was very excited when my mother and I joined the fold, especially considering the circumstance that had added us to the family. It was certainly not a conducive environment to grow up in. The flat was crammed, there was no privacy for anyone, there was hardly even space to move, and of course, it was always noisy. Quarrels broke out all the time, as they are bound to under such living conditions. There was no peace at all.

      It was certainly not a happy home, so what chance did my childhood have of being happy or wholesome? My parents could offer me no love, and my uncles and aunties sidestepped me like an unwanted puppy that had happened to get in their way. Only my paternal grandmother, who brought me up, showed me attention. In fact, she showered me with much love and kindness. Although my parents and I lived under one roof, we didn’t behave like a family. There was no love or care given to me. To my parents, I was a nuisance and a total embarrassment.

      Looking back on my childhood, I see that I was filled with angst, regret, and frustration. Yet I cannot today say that the situation was all bad, as it taught me to be independent, resourceful, and self-reliant. It developed in me the toughness to deal with life’s challenges. That self-reliance and toughness have helped me as an adult to achieve many things. I am where I want to be able to do the best I can for my family, clients, and friends. Of course there are bad days when my past comes back to torment me, but it never brings me down so low that I cannot rise again.

      Today, my struggle is really with the challenges I face in my life; as a father and a husband; and as a member of society that is constantly changing.

      I believe my experiences have value. I believe I have something worthwhile to share with you. My struggles have brought me to a place of victory, and I would like to share my journey with you in the hope that you will reach the same destination. Perhaps you will find something in the pages of my life that will help you deal with a painful past and a changing present in order to build for a clear and certain future in which you have overcome the odds and are where you have always wanted to be.

      part1_cover

      NOT WANTED

      My parents were forced to get married because of me. My father was only 19 and my mother was 17. When she found out that she was pregnant with me, she had to give up school too. No wonder they seemed to prefer that I had never been born – I was evidence of all that they had had to give up, in addition to being evidence of what they had ‘done wrong’, and the evidence of their shame.

      Apparently, my maternal grandmother had wanted my mother to have an abortion but her mother, my great grandmother, would have nothing of the sort happen. My grandmother wanted my mother to start anew and marry a Caucasian. In her thinking, all Caucasian men were rich. She wanted my mother to marry a rich man.

      However, her plans were thwarted because my paternal grandmother managed to come up with the money (by bidding for the ‘tontine’) to hold a traditional wedding for my parents, and that’s how I managed to make it into this world after all.

      Therefore, I owe my life to two grand old ladies -- my maternal great grandmother and my paternal grandmother.

      I learned all this from my paternal grandmother, who took care of me as a child growing up in a living hell.

      Anyhow, my great grandmother was not poor by any standards. Her family owned three shop lots. One of the shop lots was a coffee shop that was doing very well. When she passed away, my grandmother inherited a lot of money from her. I still remember my great grandmother vividly because she used to dote on me when I was a toddler. She knew I had been born under ‘unlucky’ circumstances. She lived to the ripe old age of 92. I was nineteen when she died.

      I was born in 1967 under a cloud of conflict, and was immediately put under the care of my paternal grandmother as both my parents were very young then.

      Still in their teens, they knew nothing about taking care of a baby and had no idea what their responsibilities as parents were. To them, life was to be enjoyed by going out with friends. When they were forced to get married, they were hurtled into a very stressful life full of duties and responsibilities. They had to start earning a living to take care of their ready-made family. With these new pressures suddenly fallen on their young shoulders, they simply had no time to take care of a baby. Besides, they were too dismayed with how things had turned out for themselves to have the inclination to take care of a baby.

      That’s how I ended up under my grandmother’s care. She treated me with loving kindness, like many people of her generation. She also believed in giving me a free hand when it came to my education, so I ended up being left to my own devices most of the time.

      Much later, my parents had three more children, all girls. The first was born in 1976, leaving a good nine-year gap between her and me. The next was born in 1984 while my youngest sister arrived in 1988.

      ABANDONED AND UNLOVED

      My parents were not ready when they had me, and were certainly not ready to get married and start a family when they were forced into marriage, and so they harbored a certain resentment against me and I became their punching bag whenever things went wrong.

      My father was the second son of the family. My eldest uncle has four daughters, so that makes me the eldest grandson in the Lim family. That was probably one of the reasons that I became my grandmother’s pet. She took great pains to care for me.

      The age difference between my uncles and aunties is between two and three years, and my youngest uncle is only four years my senior. He was born in 1963.

      The HDB flats we lived in were only three storeys high. My grandmother’s unit was on the ground floor, and so it was quite big. The flat had two doors, one front door and a back door. I think there

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