You have heard of China’s “Ice Boy”. He is Wang Fuman, only 8 then. He came from an ”ordinary, impoverished child living in Ludian county, in southwestern China’s Yunnan province.”
Wang was shot to Internet fame when he braved ”a freezing winter’s morning trek across the snowy 4.5km-walk to attend Zhuanshanbao Primary School.”
Well, in Singapore, we have “Acid Boy”. He is 20-year-old Samuel Lim. Jasmine Choong, ST photojournalist, reported and interviewed Samuel in the papers yesterday.
Notwithstanding that Samuel is young “with prodigious talents in music and language,” holding “a Grade 9 with distinction in Chinese string instrument guzheng and a Grade 8 in both piano and music theory” and currently studying Linguistics in NTU, he said: "I am just a boring person with an interesting history.”
Now, if Ice Boy trekked 4.5km to school everyday, Samuel’s journey has many challenges too. And it is not just about the distance he has to cover in life, but the depth of his resolve to overcome.
This is how Jasmine reported it.
“On June 29, 1999, (Samuel) made the headlines as Singapore's "miracle acid attack baby" - a label he could not get rid of growing up.
When he was three months old, a maid poured sulphuric acid down his throat, burning his vocal tract. The incident left him with speech impairment.
He was at his grandmother's flat and the two maids the family hired did not get along with each other.One of them was jealous that the other seemed to be doing a better job than her at being a maid, so when she was alone with the baby, she attacked him.
The baby was rushed to the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit at the National University Hospital.”
Lesson? Just one. It is about definition. It is almost natural or second nature for us to allow what happens (or happened) outside of us to define who we are inside.
After the acid attack, this is a list of what Samuel has to go through as reported: -
1) “The acid had burned his tongue, chin, upper airway and gastrointestinal tract.”
2) “To speak, he blocks the tube with his finger and out of his mouth comes a high-pitched, airy and sometimes squeaky voice.” As such, people have to strain to listen to him speak.
3) Samuel “has had to endure about 10 operations - he has lost count - because of intestinal obstructions, which were a regular occurrence when he was a child, and to improve the quality of his life. The last operation he underwent was in 2017, after his A levels, to improve his ability to breathe. "It's just like a normal visit to the hospital, in and out of the ward,” he said.
And,
4) He has “to feed himself eight packets of liquid formula a day by connecting a gastrostomy tube to a hole in his stomach and pouring the liquid - which he calls his "milk" - into it.“”
Despite all that, Samuel said: “I feel that neither my medical condition nor achievements alone are sufficient in defining 'me', as both aspects have paved and will continue to pave my life."
That’s definition, and it carries an urgent and important message. This message is best broken down by the philosopher Epictetus.
Here it is in one go.
“What disturbs men's minds is not events but their judgements on events: For instance, death is nothing dreadful, or else Socrates would have thought it so. No, the only dreadful thing about it is men's judgement that it is dreadful. And so when we are hindered, or disturbed, or distressed, let us never lay the blame on others, but on ourselves, that is, on our own judgements. To accuse others for one's own misfortunes is a sign of want of education; to accuse oneself shows that one's education has begun; to accuse neither oneself nor others shows that one's education is complete.”
Samuel’s definition on what defines him captures the essence of Epictetus’ message.
Indeed, neither his medical condition nor achievements alone are sufficient in defining him because for him both aspects have paved and will continue to pave his life.
This may be basic 101 of living, and trite in many ways, but the gap between the education of the mind and the education of the heart is, for some, unbridgeable because when it happens to you, when you are in the eye of the storm, going through the daily grind, what is basic 101 becomes tragic 101. And tragedy has a life of its own, it perpetuates self-misery.
But Samuel would have none of it.
Since the acid attack, he has scaled from one height to another. He refuses to be conditioned by what is external to him, particularly, that which he cannot change, that is, the speech impediment, the public stares, the difficulty in swallowing, and the ins-and-outs of the hospital ward.
In fact, Samuel’s achievements are inspiring. He had “received the SPD Youth Aspiration Award in 2014” and he ”scored an L1R5 of nine points for his O-level exams in 2016.” He was also “invited to perform the guzheng and piano in televised charity fund-raisers in 2015 and 2017.”
Yet, as he said, none of that (or his tragedy in the past) defines him. Both of them, in fact, work together in their season and own unique ways to redefine his life towards empowerment and personal fulfilment, regardless.
As Epictetus puts it, “to accuse neither oneself nor others shows that one's education is complete,” and Samuel at such a young age has (in my view) come full circle in life’s education.
Of course, when reporting of such news, you don’t get to read about his private struggles and I trust they are many. Yet, when your life is being reported, when you come to that stage, others get to read the summation of your struggles and it is about an overcoming of net effect - that is, the innermost resolve to overcome out-matched the circumstantial struggles to assign blame and resign to one’s fate.
That is what makes a life like Samuel so encouraging and uplifting. And let me end with his own words, the same way Jasmine ended the report:-
"I feel that people talk about medical conditions and treat them as 'disabilities' instead of 'traits' or 'unique behaviours' I'm just a stereotypical boy with a twist, living in the present."”
Press on Samuel, your journey may be long, but your heart has enough mileage to cover it and more.
