Everything has an end: a lesson from my little daughter

No doubt that we get carried away with the things in life. So much so that we get delusional that everything will last forever, while the bitter truth is exactly the opposite. Strange it may seem, but my most current reminder about this fact came from my 1 year old daughter.

A couple of years ago I got a dell notebook dedicated for my work. I use it for blogging, light gaming, writing books, and of course writing reports for my professor. It was a workhorse and it served me well over the past 5 years. All my research data, my ideas, my work and writings, and even my entertainment are centered in that notebook.

Last weekend, while I was using it at home with my five year old son, my daughter came and started her peculiar hobby, banging the computer. So far, my wife’s newer notebook was able to withstand the abuse. However, a different fate was in for my old dell. A couple of minutes later, the screen suddenly froze.

After a forced shutdown, the computer wouldn’t boot into windows, and only showed a black screen. Not even the BIOS screen appeared. I tried everything I could to get it to work again. I cleaned all the memory sockets, cleaned the hard disk socket, and tried booting from a USB flash disk, but to no avail. I then concluded that there must be a problem with the motherboard. And when the motherboard is dead, the computer is as good as dead as well. Repairing the motherboard would probably cost double the initial price of the computer. Thank God I was able to retrieve all the data I had by plugging in the hard disk to another notebook.

Although at first I was in shock (mainly because all of my ongoing research data was in that computer), I realize that through my dear daughter, God gave me a much needed reminder about the reality of existence. Everything will end. No matter how precious or important they may be, no matter how careful we are in taking care of them, they will eventually deteriorate and meet their end one day. The house that crumbles bit by bit, the car that goes to the mechanic more often, our memory, our life, and everything in existence is bound by this fate. When we truly understand and are conscious about this, we’d have a better attitude in facing the losses that we experience everyday.

No doubt that everything belongs to God, and everything will be returned to Him

Having mercy with unjust leaders

Looking at the rows of events in Libya reminded me about my own country in 1998, when President Suharto (may God have mercy on his soul) was brought down by people power. The two events may look similar, but there is significant difference between them, as I will mention next.

In the case of Libya, although being guilty for committing many injustices, it still horrified me to see how people had the heart to brutally torture and murder the fallen leader. Not just that, but they even had in themselves the heart to display the corpse in a shopping center freezer. Was it really necessary to humiliate him even in his death?

Contrary to what happened in Libya, when President Suharto stepped down in 1998, the people were able to forgive (although not forget) about it. He didn’t even need to flee from Indonesia and lived a normal life until he died in 2008. That showed that Indonesians have a big heart. To me, holding back and having mercy is much better, albeit much more difficult, than letting all emotions and hatred go loose.

People forget to think deep about leadership and how difficult it is to be in that position. As Baron Acton, a historian and moralist in the 19th century would say, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.” Although now we can shout and scream about the injustice that our leaders commit, perhaps we won’t be doing too well either if we were in their position.

Leadership is a tribulation. A test for whomever it is given to. And not many succeed with flying colors. Thus, we should keep the balance between condemning and having mercy towards our unjust leaders, and do our best to take the wisdom behind their appointment.

The awesomeness of ourselves

When we think deep about everything in this temporary world, we would almost always be amazed by the processes that they undergo. Whether it is the water cycle, the biosynthesis of compounds in plants, the gene expression process, or whatever there is to observe, are super complex mechanisms that would probably take forever for us to fully understand.

And to tell the truth, we need not look far to be amazed. In fact, by observing our own selves, we can also find all kinds of awesomeness. One example is our heart. The way it beats on, pumping a staggering amount of blood everyday (about 7000 liters or more!!). Or our eyes, the perfect photographic tool, outperforming even the highest tech camera. Our lungs, feet, hands, the brain, our other organs, and how complex the processes that are involved in their use, are all so amazing. In fact, there are still so many things that we cannot answer about them.

And not to forget the small details, such as how we blink our eyes. This small action that we sometimes take for granted keeps our eyes moist and cleans it from all kinds of dirtiness. Imagine if our muscles controlling how to blink lost its ability to function properly (as many people experience). We would always need to put eye drops to moisten it and find a way to hold it up so that it doesn’t close. How magnificent is this one small act!

There is something in common with many of the important physiological processes in our body, which is: “we don’t think about doing them.” Everything is automated at the highest precision. We don’t tell our heart to pump blood. We don’t tell our eyes to blink. We don’t even think about breathing. They just happen without us being aware of them.

Thus, although the above title might suggest in being an arrogant statement, it’s actually the total opposite. Everything inside of us is so awesome, so amazing, yet the truth is, we don’t contribute anything in many of its processes. This fact then begs us to think deeply about ourselves and make us be grateful with whatever we have.

How time flies... Yet how do we use it?

There is no denying that people tend to waste the greatest asset that they have, “time”. Although men dream about time travel, it is most likely nothing but fantasy and there is no way to go back. Discovery.com recently posted news regarding this, reporting that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, thus making time travel impossible, opposite to the sci-fi movies and books which are written about it. Whether this is true or not, there is still room for debate. But nevertheless, for the time being, time is ticking, passing us by, and nobody can give it back to us.

The one second that just passed will never ever be returned. It’s gone, and we have either benefited from it, or wasted it. We ourselves know better about how we spend our time. Furthermore, all of us have our criteria for what is wasteful and what is beneficial. And I think it’s a good idea to reexamine the things that we do and categorize them once again.

In the Qur’an, God talks extensively about time. In fact, as it having a beginning, it will also have an end. And the end of time of this ephemeral world is pictured vividly in the Islamic tradition, where people will be in the state of confusion. So horrifying will the end of time be, the mother will forget about her suckling baby, and the pregnant women will literally drop what they are conceiving. The end of time for those who do not experience this horrific day is the time of death. Through death, we will be separated from our current perception of time, and experience it in a whole new way.

But it’s not enough to only be horrified by what will happen. Rather, we need to get our act straight and be prepared for it. In truth, the norm is, every effort that we do is wasteful, EXCEPT the efforts that we do for good deeds, advising people towards justice, patience, and every other thing that supports these matters, while accompanying them with faith. Only by committing ourselves towards avoiding all that are wasteful will we truly become people who appreciate time. And indeed one day, we will all see the fruits of what we worked for, whether they were truly beneficial for us or not.

Beyond life

Why am I here? What am I supposed to do? What’s the point in life if we’ll eventually die in the end? and all kinds of questions that are considered taboo, might be exactly the same questions that many people are asking as we struggle to find meaning in life. Although I feel confident and comfortable with the answers that I have, there was once a time when I was amazingly distressed by not being able to get satisfactory answers for them.

Not knowing what we’re living for is truly a tragedy. And in the end, for many people, life is merely about following where their desires take them to, without any real sense of deep purpose. And when one follows his desires, there will never be satisfaction. Among the objects in which people try to fulfill their desires with are wealth, power, and social status.

Many people spend their entire lifetime in distraction, trying to gather the all the riches that they can gather. Many people work all their lives to receive recognition from other people, whether they work in a corporate setting, whether they are scientists reaching for the top in the scientific community, politics, or whatever profession they may be engaged in. But all the wealth and achievements gained, what do they really mean in the end?

In the Islamic tradition, we are told to look beyond the illusion of life. That everything that we receive and experience is a test for us. The achievements and the failures in life are only means for us to learn about how to be grateful or patient towards what God has given us. To use what we have or don’t have to serve the One who gave it to us in the first place. Do we give out our money to the poor? Do we use our power to benefit people? Do we learn things to be able to help others? If what we do only corresponds towards fulfilling our desires rather that for doing good deeds for God’s sake, we really need to reconsider what we are doing.

Everything that exists will perish, without exception, including all the efforts IF we only did them for the sake of our desires. We will only know for sure about the true value of our efforts once we visit our graves, when it will be too late to have regret.

All Sons of Adam are exalted

In every society exists a social stratum, whether legally enforced or not. Examples of legally enforced social strata can be found in societies which follow Hinduism, such as India. The kingdoms of ancient Indonesia also adopted this social stratification, up until other religions were introduced, such as Buddhism and Islam, which offered equality opposed to stratification. This social stratification based on Hinduism is called caste.

When people are divided into groups based on their socio-economic conditions, injustice is bound to happen. Whether it’s the old caste system in Hinduism, or the class system in Japan before the Meiji restoration, people at the higher class who have privilege, will most definitely oppress the ones at the bottom part of the strata. Perhaps, it’s in the animalistic human nature to want to dominate over others. Thus, it results in revolutions and revolts by the oppressed group, as it is also in human’s nature to understand truth and justice.

Nobody, no matter how rich or powerful has the license to humiliate or take the lives of those who are less fortunate, opposing colonialism, oppressive slavery, and the likes. In fact, in the Islamic tradition, when one kills a person without any just reason, it is as if he has killed the whole of humanity. Unfortunately, even in this era which is claimed to be the era of “democracy and equality”, we can still find discriminative treatments based on socio-economic backgrounds.

If only we were able to look beyond the sight of the physical eye, we would be able to see the value of every single human being. If only we were able to see with our hearts, be able to perceive the truth beyond what the physical eye sees, we would understand how amazing everyone is with their own uniqueness. Nobody is below anybody else, as opposed to the belief of many. In fact, as the Qur’an would say, “Truly, the children of Adam are exalted!” every single one of us without exception.

Spending in extravagance

2011/08/21

21th day or Ramadhan

One of the things we do to find pleasure is to spend money. Of course this is natural, but it sometimes goes out of hand to the point we become extravagant with our spending. For me, this happens most when I am left by my family for a long trip. I usually end up buying things that I don’t really need. At one time it was a new Dell laptop, and then a digital DSLR plus some lenses.

As said previously, spending in extravagance is a way which we think can make us happier in facing the turmoil of daily life. While the truth is, it is more harmful than beneficial. Rather more like a tranquilizer which makes us forget about pain even though the wound is still there.

Extravagance can cause big problem is all societies. This is especially true in the case of credit card use in the US. Credit card debt is a major problem in the US, where the average family today carries $8,000 in credit card debt according to the American Bankers' Association (Dave Ramseys blog). What is this if you don’t call it extravagance?

The truth is, even without being extravagant, many of us are living luxurious lives which can only be dreamt by the kings of the past. To have cool drinks straight from the fridge, while the old kings had to bring ice blocks from the north, to have flowing water with a turn of the knob, while they had to set up there palaces near rivers, and other facilities that we often take for granted.

By being extravagant, we become desensitized to spending our money in the correct way, especially to give in charity. We spend on unnecessary things while people are dying out of hunger in other parts of the world. So evil is the act of extravagance, the Qur’an calls the extravagant the brethren of the devil himself. Thus, we should protect ourselves from falling into extravagance and always be mindful in what we spend.