“Everybody Only Has One Body. Take Good Care of It, and It Will Take Good Care of You.”

It has been thirty-two years since my last serious accident in Thailand. Unfortunately, I have recently broken that record. I was involved in a road bike accident that fractured my left radius. I was trying to avoid an oncoming car along Ang Mo Kio Avenue 10 when I ran out of turning distance and struck the curb. The impact threw both me and the bike forward, and my left arm slammed against the leg of a signpost. The radius bone snapped cleanly into two.

I eventually underwent surgery, during which a titanium plate was inserted and secured with six screws. My wife was shocked when I called her from the A&E at Tan Tock Seng Hospital. More than that, she was disappointed. She has always reminded me, “Everybody only has one body. Take good care of it, and it will take good care of you.”

With age, I have come to realise that the body is not simply something we use to get through life. It carries the weight of our choices, our risks, and sometimes, our stubbornness. When we are younger, we tend to believe that recovery is guaranteed, that strength will return, that time will heal, that we can always push a little further. But the truth is less forgiving. The body remembers. And over time, it begins to speak back.

Past Accidents

Looking back on the two earlier accidents when I came close to death, I feel a deep sense of humility. Survival, I have come to understand, is not something we can claim credit for too easily. There are moments in life where the outcome rests on the smallest margins, a fraction of force, a matter of seconds, the presence of the right people at the right time. What we often call resilience is, in part, also grace.

The football accident and the incident in Thailand were not just episodes of injury. They were moments that revealed how fragile everything truly is. They stripped away any illusion of real control. What remained was a clearer awareness of consequence, of how quickly things can change, and how much we depend on others when they do.

Over the years, I have also come to understand responsibility in a deeper way. It is not only about making decisions or leading from the front. It is about recognising that every action carries weight, not just for ourselves, but for those around us. The loss of a teammate during that mission was something I carried with me long after the physical wounds had healed. It shaped the way I thought about leadership, about accountability, and about the duty of care we owe to others.

One Simple Truth….

Recovery, I have learnt, is never just physical. It is also about returning with a different awareness, of limits, of priorities, and of what truly matters. Strength is no longer about how much one can endure, but about knowing when to step back, when to listen, and when to preserve what has been given.

Today, I no longer see these accidents as isolated events. They are part of a longer conversation between life and self, one that continues to unfold. They have taught me that while we may not always control what happens to us, we can choose how we carry those experiences forward. And so, I return to a simple truth, one that has been with me all along. Not as advice, but as a reminder: we are each given only one body. It is both resilient and finite. To care for it is not caution, it is responsibility. And perhaps, in doing so, we also learn to care more deeply for the life that it carries.

#Accident