Learning to Let Go for Freedom of Mind (2)
Leo Royston never paused in his pursuit of wealth; instead, he drove himself ever harder, performing around the world for money. In 1936, during a show in London, Royston suddenly collapsed on stage. Amid the chaos, people rushed him to the city’s most renowned Thompson Emergency Hospital. The diagnosis: acute heart failure. After frantic resuscitation, he barely managed to open his eyes, but his life still hung by a thread. Despite the hospital’s use of the most advanced drugs and medical equipment of the time, his life could not be saved. On the verge of death, Royston uttered, in broken breaths, a final sentence: “Your body is enormous, but your life needs only one heart.”
Dr. Harold Harden, the director of Thompson Emergency Hospital and a world-famous thoracic surgeon, watched helplessly as Royston closed his eyes for the last time, unable to do anything to save him. Tears streamed down Harden’s face as he lamented, "Royston realized too late."
To warn future generations, Dr. Harden decided to have Royston’s final words engraved in a prominent place in the hospital’s reception hall. From then on, every patient who entered Thompson Emergency Hospital would see that striking warning at first glance. For many years, the inscription truly served its purpose as a cautionary reminder.
Forty-seven years passed in the blink of an eye. The warning remained conspicuously on the wall of Thompson Emergency Hospital’s main hall, but Royston gradually faded from people’s memory. Meanwhile, heart disease only grew more rampant, becoming the leading threat to human life.
In the summer of 1983, Thompson Emergency Hospital received a critically ill patient: Richard Merle, an American oil tycoon. Days earlier, he had come to England for an important business negotiation, but suddenly collapsed at the table. His entourage rushed him to the hospital, where he was diagnosed with heart failure. Even in grave illness, Merle never forgot his business. He rented an entire floor of the hospital, installed phones and fax machines to connect with headquarters and branches, and continued to issue orders to all corners of the globe while receiving treatment. His attending doctors repeatedly urged him to rest, warning that overwork could prove fatal at any moment. Yet Merle persisted in his ways, leaving the doctors powerless to intervene.
One day, Merle wandered into the hospital’s reception hall and noticed the inscription on the wall. He stopped, moved, and silently recited the warning to himself. He then asked his staff to summon his attending physician and inquired about the origin of the inscription. The doctor explained the entire story. After listening, Merle fell into deep contemplation, standing before the warning for over an hour before leaving with a solemn expression.
Back in his ward, Merle first ordered his staff to remove all phones and fax machines. Next, he instructed the company’s finance department to quickly audit the accounts, saying he had major plans after his discharge.
A month later, Merle recovered and was discharged. The first thing he did upon returning to his company was to sell the business he had painstakingly built up to tens of millions of dollars. Then, he took his family to a villa in the Scottish countryside, embracing a carefree, idyllic life far removed from the bustle of the world.
Merle’s extraordinary decision immediately sparked all kinds of speculation from the outside world. The media, in particular, were fascinated and clamored for interviews, hoping to unravel the mystery. Yet Merle refused every request without hesitation.
Later, people finally found the answer in Merle’s autobiography. At the end of the book, he wrote: “In this world, countless people exhaust themselves day and night in the pursuit of money and wealth. After making a million, they want ten million; after ten million, a hundred million. They devote all their energy to amassing riches, but in the end, what do they truly gain? The reason I made my choice was simply to learn from Royston’s lesson. His final words—‘Your body is enormous, but your life needs only one heart’—awakened me completely. But I would add my own realization: Wealth and obesity are much the same; both mean acquiring more than you need. Excess fat burdens the heart; excess money weighs down the soul; excessive pursuit only increases the burdens of life. If you want to live with health and freedom, you must respect your own life and let go of ‘surplus’ wealth.”