I have lost count of my regrets; the disappointments, betrayals, and moments when life has left me diminished. But it is impossible to have lived fully without encountering these things. A life lived completely inevitably contains regret, but a life consumed by regret has not been lived.

I am not one to hold tightly to my regrets. Most slip away like water through my fingers. Some wedge between the crooks of my fingers or finger webs. Those regrets, I treat like a fine object I have come across—I carefully examine their features and uniqueness before storing them away in my special mental storeroom, usually never to return. The longer we hold onto our regrets, the more they diminish us.

But there is a rare category of regret that does not slip through my fingers. Some do not simply wedge between the crevices of my hands but weigh heavily on my palms and my soul. These cannot fit in that storeroom. These, I am forced to carry with me everywhere I go, serving as my penance to do better, be better than I was yesterday.

It was shortly before my father passed away that I cultivated such a rare regret.

After years of encouraging my father to write, I realised it was more conducive and productive to orally interview him and record his thoughts and memories. My father was not a productive writer. He laboured too much over every line, every paragraph and every page. His obsession with writing the perfect sentence stifled his productivity, and I’ve always felt we are the poorer for it.

After getting him to agree to the interview, I started cultivating delusions of grandeur about my little family project. I didn’t want to do just an audio recording. I wanted audio and video. I wanted the video to be documentary-style quality. The shots had to be from multiple angles to keep the viewer interested. There wouldn’t be just headshots, but shots from above, background shots, and shots of old documents to intersperse the main interview.

I bought equipment. I purchased additional DSLR cameras to set up around the interview, along with lighting and reflectors to illuminate the scene properly, and discreet microphones to ensure the clarity and sharpness of the sound. I had a great deal of fun shopping for the equipment. I studied lighting, video shooting and editing. I practised my video shooting and experimented with lighting.

It was only when my father coughed up blood that it hit me like a wrecking ball that we did not have much time left. The next night, I miked my father up with his permission, miked myself up, hit the record button and we started talking. No cameras, no lighting, no fancy equipment, no orchestration. Just us, the mikes and my iPad.

We did that every day and night whenever he was well. On days I could not make it, my sons stood in for me to keep my father talking and telling us stories. Even after he was admitted to the hospital, we kept going. Every day, whenever he was up for it. I took half days off to be around him.

The final month of his life was the time when my father and I spoke the most to each other, most honestly and candidly, probably more than we ever spoke to each other in our entire lives. There was nothing to hide anymore; there was nothing to pretend between us. Dead men tell no tales, but dying men have no time for lies. We both knew this was his last chance to say whatever he wanted and could.

I hungrily absorbed, documented and preserved as much as I could. I am still doing that. He is still alive in me, and I am still learning and acquainting myself with him through his papers, writings and correspondence. But I am still punching myself for not starting it sooner. I can’t help but regret that I didn’t start sooner.

This incident reminded me that if I intuitively feel strongly about something, I should just start it. I need to dispense with delusions of grandeur. I should not get caught up making grand plans. I should not waste effort injecting grandeur into that initial humble intuition. Instead, I should follow that intuition and do what it tells me. I must start it. I musn’t wait. Never mind if it is clumsy, awkward and humbly. Never mind if I make mistakes and look like a fool.

If my intuition feels true, the rest of the world be damned.

And if my intuition feels true, I must start. Just. Start.

That is what I learned from my latest regret.

I carried this lesson with me like a stone in my pocket, turning it over in quiet moments, waiting for the next opportunity to apply it. That opportunity came sooner than I expected, in the form of an opportunity that would test whether I had truly learned to act on intuition rather than grand planning.

My recent ArtxLaw Initiative (ALI) I started with my friends Nicholas Choong and Raul Lee is me applying my learning. ALI was established to provide legal advice to Malaysian arts practitioners across all fields. ALI began from a discussion with my friend, Karl Rafique Nadzarin, in 2024 to create a collective for the arts community to improve their bargaining power against the galleries and collectors. Since both of us are natural mental masturbators of the highest order, we naturally dreamed up grand plans about how we would go about it.

Fast forward, we’re in 2025. All I had were the echo of the words of our discussion bouncing around my head. Just thinking about our plans ennervated me. They seem so large, grand and heavy. There seems to be so much to do to get to the point where we can do what we want to do.

And all I wanted to do was provide immediate advice to artists, aggregate their complaints, analyze their complaints, categorise them, then figure out how to address them as a class. It occurred to me all I need was a table, chairs, at least another like-minded lawyer and friends to host the ALI. Just start. See what happens.

I was fortunate to find Nicholas and Raul incredibly supportive of the idea and get it going. Nicholas did the poster. Three of us blasted it on our social medial channels. Nicholas supplied the table and chairs. Marisa Ng, another artist, provided snacks and support. Everyone spread the word. Boom. Now we’re looking to see how to keep ALI going and support the artists community with the like-minded.

So, if you feel strongly about something or a cause, if it’s haunting your mind and soul, if it rattles against the frame of your heart, then do it. You need to do it. Start. Stop whatever you are doing and do a bit of it now. The longer you hold it off, the more you will be diminished by it. That’s your soul telling you what you need to do to feel alive.

Don’t wait. Don’t build grand castles in your head. Don’t work everything out first. Don’t have a grand plan that stretches into the distant future.

Start. Just start. Clumsily, foolishly, awkwardly, painfully. But start. Follow that intuition. Follow it beyond your sight. Don’t anticipate where you will go with it. Let it show you. Allow yourself the pleasure of not knowing and discovering.

The journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step.

None of our first step was elegant, comfortable or perfect.

But it never stopped us from learning to walk.