The strength of your heart.

What do you do with your life when you are already 46, suffering from a spinal cord injury in a workplace accident in 1996 and paralysed from the waist down, victim of a fall last year and had a broken leg while on the way to work, are divorced with no children, and once lived at a void deck for three years? 

Well, you deliver of course. You deliver food to people who are hungry and want their meals on time of course. 

Isn't that the normal response to adversity? Isn't that what normal people do after losing limbs, have little to go by daily, going thru a divorce and even doesn't have a roof over their head? Kamas is one such "normal" person. 

Mr Kamas Mohd didn't asked to be recognised. He was discovered by a customer and was featured in Stomp when the customer "praised him for travelling 2.5km on his wheelchair to her home in Stirling Road."

Kamas is neither slow too. He insists that "he is not slower than anyone else - he can fulfil a delivery order within the same timeframe of 35 minutes."

Rain or shine, Kamas has never cancelled an order so far. He is determined to go the distance regardless of his disability and setbacks in life. 

When he broke his leg last year, he was given nearly two years MC. So, his previous employers had to let him go because they were unable to pay his wages for the long MC period. But they told him to return after he has recovered. 

This was where Kamas found UberEats and now he earns a higher income of $400 a week. Before that, he was earning only $530 a month. 

Kamas currently lives in a rental Redhill flat and for the moment, his rent, water and electricity bills are paid for by MSF until he is back on his own two feet. 

Lesson? One. 

The world will do most of us no favours. There is no free lunch. Life gives no hand-outs. Happy ever after happens only in fairy tales. In the real world, it is about overcoming ever after. 

Some of us living reasonably well, with a roof over our head, and a family intact, with no disability, and we still suffer from hangovers, mild depression, dull moods, listlessness and a broken spirit, indefinitely.

The disease of the affluence is the dis-ease of the heart, and that is where all issues of life flow eventually. 

I discover that there is a poverty that is far greater than the poverty of one's living circumstances. This poverty has nothing to do with money or wealth. Neither has it anything to do with power, fame nor influence.

You can be the richest man on earth, but the saddest, even loneliest. You are befriended not so much because you are you, but because you possess many things that define and possess you. 

Or, you can be famous, and everyone knows you, but yet none of your loved ones know you the way the millions of fans know you. They know how far apart you are from the image you diligently project to your adoring fans. Deep inside, your wants are many, your spirit parched and your soul unsettled. 

The hearts of the rich and famous are not always at peace. They are no doubt rich in the way that is defined in this world, but they have a vacuum in their heart that cannot be filled by endless accumulation or depthless ambition. 

Neither are the poor spared this dis-ease of the heart. They too can be victims of a heart that never finds peace within. 

While the rich can be consumed by vanity, arrogance and greed, the poor can be consumed by envy, bitterness and unforgiveness. 

All this, I believe, boils down to the issues of the heart. And that is where enduring riches or crippling poverty reside. 

Its measuring rod is not about how materially deprived or endowed one is. It is neither about how good nor bad one looks. Or how well one is known, or for that matter, not known at all.

In my book, the greatest poverty is a heart that never settles, that is, a heart that is never at peace. It is a heart that wants more to cover a void that cannot be filled. 

It is a heart that plants its security on life's superficials like wealth, fame and power. It is a heart that breaks or dies every time another succeeds, wins or flourishes. And it is a heart that cannot see beyond the jealousy, hate and bitterness to the benefits to be gained from the growth of character, hope and love. 

The greatest poverty is in fact the poverty of imagination, magnanimity and compassion. All of which have nothing to do with how circumstantially rich or poor you are. 

Most importantly, there is no poverty in the heart greater than a heart that readily surrenders itself to the dullness of the spirit, to the discontentment of the soul and to the endless appetites of the flesh. 

Let me end by saying that the greatest wealth is found in a heart that loves unconditionally, forgives unreservingly, and hopes unfailingly. No man or woman is ever poor when he or she is rich in the heart. 

In a world where the benchmark to measure wealth is not based on the superficials like money, fame or appearance, people like Kamas will stand tallest amongst all. 

It will be a world of overcoming hearts, a world of inspiring souls, and a world of embracing love. 

Such a radically redefined world would put to shame those who put their faith and hope in the pursuits of self-enrichment, and exalts those who sacrifice self for others. 

More relevantly, it will be a world our children can safely grow up in to treasure and pursue enduring riches that come from a resilient, overcoming and compassionate heart. Cheerz.