Dear Friends,
On Monday evening, we welcomed 13 cyclists and their volunteer safety crew with a home-cooked dinner, clean towels, and ice-cold drinks. Since 2014, the Epic Cyclist Group has been organising an annual endurance ride that covers at least 1000 kilometres to raise funds and awareness for charity. Over the years, they have raised some S$4.4 million dollars for the Kidney Dialysis Foundation and HCA Hospice Care. This year, the Beyond Epic Ride which began on Friday, 14 July at Betong Thailand, raised some $40,000 for our work.
The cyclists aged from 35 to 64 years covered 250 km a day which took them from Thailand to Malaysia on the first day where they rested at Telok Intan. It was then Port Dickson, Batu Pahat and our office at Jalan Klinik, Singapore. For Cheryl and Xiao Ting, it was their first endurance ride and they told me that they persevered because they felt deeply for the children in our programmes and the experience of how a group of people with the single-minded purpose of ensuring every one of its members crossed the finishing line was simply invigorating. It was teamwork at its best and the deep care members extended to each other was an experience they would always savour and remember.
As I presented each cyclist with a medal of completion and expressed our thanks, I was moved by their response. All of them thanked us for the opportunity to contribute and the very satisfying achievement. They were aching from the hard work but were filled with joy knowing that they have helped a good cause.
Thus, it seemed fitting when a passer-by who was taken by the sight of these cyclists riding in asked a colleague what was going on. Upon learning of the effort, he smiled and quoted Friedrich Nietzsche, “He who has a ‘why’ to live can bear almost any ‘how’.”
What we are most grateful for is that these cyclists and their volunteer safety crew completed this endeavour incident free. A week before they began their ride, they held their safety briefing at our office. Then I also learnt how they have been conditioning themselves for the ride and I was thinking that when fatigue sets in, accidents are likely.
Anyway, that evening as I spoke about our work, I may have come across a little tired when they enquired about our challenges. Ron, a 64-year-old participant told me that I had to keep going because it matters to someone I may not even know. He said that he was very sure of that because if a human service professional did not care about him, he would not be there that evening.
During our appreciation dinner, I learnt from Ron that he was incarcerated 7 times and he reckons that his problems began at 13 when he could not see eye to eye with his father. This led to a long struggle with substance dependency, poor mental health, and the painful consequences of getting arrested for various misdemeanours. Eventually, he acquired a faith-based strength and had raised a family trading in preloved cameras and other equipment for photography.
Ron is also a volunteer mentor for young offenders, and he tells them that the best way to honour their relationship would be to care for someone else. The way he sees it, it is service that has kept him sane, stable, and sound and a better world is created when everyone does their little bit. “Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.” Great advice from Mother Teresa he told me.
For peace and community,
Gerard
