My Father's Death and Legacy - Part 2 of 6

Hi. For new readers who may not know me, please note that my father, Daniel Alagaretnam Devadason, died at 1 am on Friday April 4th 2008. I've decided to celebrate his life by sharing six enrichment lessons I learnt from him. The first was 'Pay for High Quality', which you can read more about at:
http://the-cool-time-and-money-blog.blogspot.com/2008/04/my-fathers-death-and-legacy-part-1-of-6.html
The second lesson is what I want to share with you today...

As I write this, it has been 20 days since my father died. I still wake up each morning with a sense of loss. I find it hard to believe that I now live in a world that no longer contains him. While I derive great comfort in knowing that I will meet him again, on the 'other side of the veil', as it were, the grief is still palpable.

I find writing about him, though, helpful in focusing my thoughts on the legacy he left. And so the second of six lessons I want to leave with you is:

Focus on Professionalism.

My father believed in the importance of professionalism. There are many ways to define what it is to be a true professional. In my mind a true professional is marked by two key characteristics:

1. Adherence to a strong code of ethics; and
2. The ability to make money from activities associated with the profession.

My father met both criteria, in spades! He was born on November 20th 1922. He was a teenager when the Japanese invaded Malaya in December 1941. He survived that horrific time and became a teacher. He later embarked upon the then iconoclastic journey to the UK to study law. He worked hard and studied even harder. His time in Lincoln's Inn was especially cherished. His firstborn, my older brother Rabin Devadason, later followed in our father's footsteps and also entered Lincoln's Inn.

I really have lost count of the number of times my father recounted his experiences in the UK. He returned to Malaya and began his law career in 1960.

I was born in 1964, and all my life it has been crystal clear that my father's identity and sense of self was inextricably linked to his chosen profession. He was a lawyer, through and through. His respect for the life of a professional was extreme. For instance, we used to argue, with startling regularity, because he wanted me to become a doctor and I categorically refused to even contemplate such a career - feeling absolutely no calling for this admittedly important profession!

At this juncture of my life, as I look forward to turning 44 years of age next month, I realise that despite the disagreements my father and I had concerning the choice of specific profession, I too have gone down the path of forging a strong allegiance to a specific profession. In my case, it is financial planning.

The role of financial plannner was never one that my father fully understood. But I would like to believe that from his vantage point now, in the hereafter, he will have reason to be proud of me in the way I carry out the duties associated with my chosen profession, in the decades to come.

My financial planning and investment principal company, MAAKL MUTUAL, holds to 7 principles of ethics that encapsulate our perspective on the issue. They are Competence, Fairness, Confidentiality, Integrity, Professionalism, Objectivity and Diligence. My father would have approved of each of those principles.

Regardless of your chosen field of endeavour, be it brain surgery or plumbing, architecture or cooking, I hope that you will choose to follow D.A. Devadason's Principle Number 2: Focus on Professionalism, and thus grow into the very best professional you can be.

I'll write on the third lesson soon, so if you wish to read about it, please do check back here at The Cool Time and Money Blog by making a note of this URL, http://the-cool-time-and-money-blog.blogspot.com/every few days.

Finally, for the sake of completeness, should you wish to learn more about my life planning, financial planning or retirement planning consulting services, here's my bio. Thank you and all the best.

Warmest regards,


Rajen

PS. I am keeping myself even busier than usual, as it is the most effective way I know to deal with my current grief. So, please use the comment facility, via the 'COMMENTS' link below, should you wish to leave a message for me or even a thought to share with others about what I've written today. Thank you again for dropping by.

Rajen Devadason is CEO of RD Book Projects and its sister company RD WealthCreation Sdn Bhd. He lives in sunny, peaceful Malaysia with his gorgeous wife Rachel. He's a Malaysian Securities Commission-licensed financial planner, a life planning consultant, a professional speaker and a serial author... which probably explains why he's so exhausted! Some of his books are available here, and, if you're interested, here are some quotations he reckons are accurate, bold or cool.

My Father's Death and Legacy - Part 1 of 6

Thank you for dropping by. My father died at 1 am on Friday April 4th 2008. For the first couple of days, I was numb from shock and running on adrenalin. After that, intense grief set in. I'm still very sad, but I draw comfort from knowing that I will see my father again... on the 'other' side, when it comes my turn to utilise the Cross of Jesus Christ - as my father did - to safely step through the doorway of death into eternity.

In the interim, I've realised the best thing I can do is to continue to focus on helping the living, to the best of my professional ability. Toward that end, I've thought long and hard about the lessons I learnt from my father, Daniel Alagaretnam Devadason, who right up to last year, 2007, was probably Malaysia's most senior practising lawyer.

I can't even begin to count all the awesome lessons I derived from my father, who was commonly referred to in our hometown of Malacca as 'lawyer Devadason'. Because the primary focus of this blog is personal development, particularly in the realm of financial planning, I'm going to focus this posting and five more that I plan to write for you in the near future on six specific enrichment lessons I learnt from my father. (For those of you who are in Malaysia and eager to read about all six lessons in one place, I wrote about them in my regular financial planning column for Malaysian Business magazine. I believe that particular column will come out in the April 16th 2008 issue of the magazine, so do check out your local newsstand for it. If you have trouble finding it, drop its editor, my friend Charles Raj, a line at mbeditor@beritapub.com.my for information on where you might be able to buy a copy of that issue.)

The first of those six lessons, the one we'll consider today, is:

Pay for high quality.

Even though I have worked long and hard over the years to provide my readers, audience members and clients a rich selection of free resources that will help them with their life planning endeavours, especially in the spheres of financial planning, time management and goal-setting, I know that the wisest people also understand the importance and often the necessity of paying top dollar for high quality goods and services.

I began to learn that particular lesson when I was very young. You see, my father always made it a point to buy brand new cars. I think he did so because he believed in owning usable assets in tiptop condition. And my father never did anything in half measures!

My older brother Rabin Devadason, himself a well-known lawyer in Kuala Lumpur, tells me that our father owned more than 70 brand new cars throughout his earthly lifespan of 85 years and 4 1/2 months.

I am not a clone of my father. None of his 10 children - Rabin, Eva, Viji, me, Jaya, Rani, Sarah, Pushpa, Parames and Niza - is! We're all vastly different individuals... different from each other and different from our father. But the underpinning principles beneath the intent of our father's words and actions have served all of us well.

In my opinion, that is the greatest possible legacy our father could have ever hoped to leave us. I believe he knows that now, from his vastly changed and improved vantage point in the hereafter!

A classic example of how I extracted the core principle behind my father's lesson about being willing, often eager, to pay for high quality, while not necessarily adopting the same form of expression, is in our car-buying philosophies.

As I mentioned, my father bought more than 70 brand new cars throughout his life. Yet, I still drive the very first one I ever bought myself! It is now 16 years old, with more than 538,000 km on the odometer.

Also, I didn't buy it new. I bought it third-hand, when it was just 2 1/2 years old with 53,199 km on the 'clock'. But back then, that purchase was the absolute best I could afford at the time. In the intervening time, I've worked hard to maintain it in 'tiptop condition'! My adherence to my father's teaching on paying for quality has found expression in very different ways.

Are you also willing to adhere to D.A. Devadason's Principle Number 1: Pay for high quality?

If so, great. If not, I suggest you at least begin considering the wisdom of doing so.

Life is short. The Bible says we each have just one life to live here on earth. It seems to me, therefore, that we owe it to ourselves to ensure we don't shortchange ourselves during this all-too-brief sojourn on Earth.

I'll write on the second lesson soon, so if you want to read about it, please do check back here at The Cool Time and Money Blog by making a note of this URL, http://the-cool-time-and-money-blog.blogspot.com/every few days.

Finally, for the sake of completeness, should you wish to learn more about my life planning, financial planning or retirement planning consulting services, here's my bio. Thank you. Stay well.

Warmest regards,


Rajen

PS. I am keeping myself even busier than usual, as it is the most effective way I know to deal with my current grief. So, please use the comment facility, via the 'COMMENTS' link below, should you wish to leave a message for me or even a thought to share with others about what I've written today. Thank you again for dropping by.

Rajen Devadason is CEO of RD Book Projects and its sister company RD WealthCreation Sdn Bhd. He lives in sunny, peaceful Malaysia with his gorgeous wife Rachel. He's a Malaysian Securities Commission-licensed financial planner, a life planning consultant, a professional speaker and a serial author... which probably explains why he's so exhausted! Some of his books are available here, and, if you're interested, here are some quotations he reckons are accurate, bold or cool.