Adrian tan

So here you are, in your twenties, thinking that you'll have another 40 years to go. Four decades in which to live long and prosper.Bad news. Read the papers. There are people dropping dead when they're 50, 40, 30 years old. Or quite possibly just after finishing their convocation. They would be very disappointed that they didn't meet their life expectancy.I'm here to tell you this. Forget about your life expectancy.

Finally, you will find that there is no half-measure when it comes to loving someone. You either don’t, or you do with every cell in your body, completely and utterly, without reservation or apology. It consumes you, and you are reborn, all the better for it.

Find that pursuit that will energize you, consume you, become an obsession. Each day, you must rise with a restless enthusiasm. If you don't, you are working.

You will find, that when you have someone to love, that the face is less important than the brain, and the body is less important than the heart.

Don't expect anything. Erase all life expectancies. Just live.

It is far too easy to be liked, one merely has to be accommodating and hold no strong convictions.

Life is complicated. It wtarts before we're ready, it continues while we're still trying to figure out the point of it. And it ends long before we've worked out just what to do.

It far easier to find a reason not to love someone, than otherwise. Rejection requires only one reason. Love requires complete acceptance.

Don't work. Avoid telling the truth. Be hated. Love someone. You're going to have a busy life. Thank goodness there's no life expectancy.

Be hated. One does not have to be evil to be hated. In fact, it’s often the case that one is hated precisely because one is trying to do right by one’s own convictions. It is far too easy to be liked, one merely has to be accommodating and hold no strong convictions. Then one will gravitate towards the centre and settle into the average. That cannot be your role. There are a great many bad people in the world, and if you are not offending them, you must be bad yourself.

Loving someone has great benefits. There is admiration, learning, attraction and something which, for the want of a better word, we call happiness. In loving someone, we become inspired to better ourselves in every way. We learn the true worthlessness of material things. We celebrate being human. Loving is good for the soul... You will also find that it is no great tragedy if your love is not reciprocated. You are not doing it to be loved back. Its value is to inspire you.

Do not waste the vast majority of your life doing something you hate so that you can spend the small remainder sliver of your life in modest comfort. You may never reach that end anyway. Resist the temptation to get a job. Instead, play. Find something you enjoy doing. Do it. Over and over again. You will become good at it for two reasons: you like it, and you do it often. Soon, that will have value in itself.

Author details

Adrian Tan: Biography and Life Work

Adrian Tan was a notable Lawyer. The story of Adrian Tan began on 4 February 1966 in Singapore. The legacy of Adrian Tan continues today, following their passing on 8 July 2023 in Singapore.

Adrian Tan Gim Hai (4 February 1966 – 8 July 2023) was a Singaporean lawyer and author. Known for writing the Teenage Textbook series of books in the 1980s, he was the 27th president of the Law Society of Singapore and a partner at TSMP Law Corporation . Of Hainanese descent, Tan was born in Singapore and studied law at the National University of Singapore (NUS). While studying at NUS, he would write two novels in the 1980s – The Teenage Textbook and The Teenage Workbook – which would prove to be popular in Singapore.

Philosophical Views and Reflections

While an undergraduate law student at NUS, Tan wrote the novels The Teenage Textbook (1988) and The Teenage Workbook (1989), which became bestsellers that sold over 50,000 copies. The Teenage Textbook was also made into a stage play by The Necessary Stage in 1997; a film in 1998, which topped the box office in Singapore for four weeks; a 2017 musical titled The Teenage Textbook Musical ; and a 2021 TV series on Channel 5 . In 2015, The Teenage Textbook was listed by The Business Times as one of the top 10 English Singapore books from 1965 to 2015. Tan also was a consultant for the Channel 5 television legal drama The Pupil . Tan was invited to a National Library Board festival but later boycotted it over the board's decision to withdraw from its libraries children's books that depicted same-sex families.

Tan married Angelina, who was an employee of the Ministry of Defence , they had no children. He was diagnosed with cancer in March 2022, and died on 8 July 2023, at age 57. At a memorial service celebrating his life, Tan was said to be someone who "had very little ego" and "cared for the less fortunate." Several lawyers attended the memorial service, including K. Shanmugam , Sundaresh Menon , and Hri Kumar Nair . After his death, a collection of essays by Tan on the issues he cared about and commented on, was published in a book entitled, If I were King of Singapore .

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Empery Quotes
Inspire · Reflect · Repeat