Entrepreneur Viljar Arakas: Serious illness teaches what life's true value is

Entrepreneur Viljar Arakas recounts his battle with serious illness, which occurred nearly a decade ago. He acknowledges that life has moved on and the fear from that time has faded with the years. Arakas believes that health is the one concern that overshadows all others.

Estonian entrepreneur Viljar Arakas (47) looks back on a dramatic period in his life when he had to battle serious illness. Nearly ten years later, he says the experience did not turn him into a completely different person, as is often assumed with such stories.

Arakas acknowledges that he no longer lives in the shadow of his former diagnosis. Work has returned, everyday worries have returned, and the fear that once gripped him has begun to fade with time. Life has simply moved on.

"If your worry is your health, you don't have a million worries, you have exactly one," Arakas says, describing how serious illness puts life in perspective. This simple truth captures the essence of his experience — the fear of losing your health eclipses all other concerns.

According to Arakas, he does not want to romanticize his illness experience or present it as something that transformed him into a completely different and wiser person overnight. Life is more complex than that, and people don't change overnight, even after surviving a serious illness.

Through his story, Arakas shares the thought that health is a value worth reflecting on even when everything is going well — not only when something has already gone wrong.