At 10, I already thought about how my actions then would affect me 10 years down the road. I'm not trying to sound condescending, but I was that risk averse. That's all good and it got me here but my biggest mistake was to think that "genuinity" is real and will prevail.

People see what they wanna see.

I guess this is good bye. 

Write.

I'm recycling relevant things I wrote in my journal for the past many years.

Sometimes I don't even know how I came up with these things and I feel like I've lost that same curiosity, fascination for things that I strongly believe matter most.

Other times, I'm glad I made the thoughts permanent, at least on a piece of paper.

Where gravity is dead

The concept of borrowing and lending in Islam is simple. You pay back the exact amount you borrow. The lender should not expect a return. Interest is exploitative and unfair because it guarantees the lender a profit without having to do the work or bear any of the risk.

The problem is people are already accustomed to the practice that they should be rewarded for waiting (i.e. interest) but that is not the true fundamental for borrowing and lending. It is to assist those in need by mobilising funds from those who are in possession of excess funds which they do not need to use at that specific moment.

It is a relationship based on social betterment.
However, it's funny how there are innumerable psychological variables and elements in Economics yet altruism is always dismissed. This is what differs from Islam. Instead of "husnuzon" or thinking the best in others, they'd rather subscribe to assuming the worst in people.

This is evidenced by how "Wealth of Nations" got a more prominent recognition, when "Theory of Moral Sentiments" was really more descriptive/accurate in explaining the economic mechanisms of society.

-Of borrowing and lending, ainulryakova, 15th November 2011

oh a smile would melt me to an asphalt strip

Perhaps you experience the truth only when you do not deny the shortcoming and the pain that comes with it no matter how severe.

The truth is exclusive even though it may not appear so and if people knew that, the effort put to hiding it will instead be used to finding it.

What I mean by the former statement is that, take for instance an article you read about something closely related to you, and it tells you something generally negative. If it's true, then you should not deny it which is difficult as accepting the truth often comes with a soft stab to the heart no matter how oblivious or in denial you are of the pain. However, if the article is untrue, you will be left feeling indifferent.

By the latter statement I mean, the truth is not exclusive to certain people but to those who seek it. The truth is so significant and immeasurably insightful but people somehow tend to go out of their way to avoid it. ironic.

-Of the truth, ainulryakova, 3rd November 2011.

You accept the love you think you deserve

That is definitely my favorite quote from Perks of Being a Wallflower. The quote is even more meaningful than I thought it would be before watching the movie.

It's just so candid. Sometimes you settle for less because you don't know how much you're worth. But then again, it's pretty screwed up putting value on yourself. 

Amsterdam

I've got to get out of this hole.

stood on the egde, tied to a noose. You came along and you cut me loose. 

What's more important than the win? The chase.

But that's the 15 year old me speaking.

Surah Al-An'am

I don't know how to describe this Surah accurately. The Quran is full of stories but this surah struck a different chord with me. I was intensely angry with the level of ignorance evident today, and perhaps I was even more frustrated knowing that I let myself contribute to this societal cancer. In an attempt to calm myself down, I opened the Quran, and found this verse:

"If their dislike is hard on you, then see if you can seek a tunnel in the ground or a ladder to the sky, so that you can bring them a sign. (You know) if Allah willed, Allah could have gathered them on the guidance. So do not be like the ignorant. "

6:35 Surah Al-An'am

This verse to me, is extremely powerful and I don't think my interpretation can do justice to it(even that is an understatement).
Just to be clear, The interpretation is obvious but I really hate to appear using Quranic verses to justify my actions or to make myself feel better because it's parallel to my actions/thoughts.

This verse calmed me down for 1 reason: it was a solution.

You are not entitled to be angry at those who challenge your thoughts whether rightfully or not. You have no liberty to ridicule the ignorant. They are not deserving of your judgment because "If Allah willed, Allah could have gathered them on guidance" and to top it all perfectly "So do not be like the ignorant" because firstly, ignorance is the source of moral decadence but the ignorant can turn into the conscious and the scariest part is vice versa.

At one point I did feel like it's easier to hide knowledge and consciousness because sometimes it repels people (real scientific research has proven so). Once you start hiding, you stop yearning to know more because sharing or application of knowledge is ultimately the end to this means. So the best thing to do is stated already in that verse. Don't perceive to remain the guided one forever, don't past judgment on others and most importantly, enrich yourself with knowledge even when others fail to do so because only Allah knows what our thoughts are.

it's kind of disheartening when you get into and accident whether big or small, and the first thing someone asks is whether your car's ok or whether your parents are angry that you ruined a new car.

i dont expect people to care about my general well- being but i get annoyed when people seem to care about my general everything-else-that-can-go-wrong-in-my-life-being

but tht's just me again,focusing on the bad when many others wished nothing but safety for me. everything's a big mess lately, and i cant seem to figure out why.

Psychonomist.

So some time in June, I took a little quote out of Sophie's world and shared it with my world:

http://downtokokomo.blogspot.com/2012/06/kinda-hard-to-imagine-that-this-was.html

Keeps me grounded every time. Just to illustrate how great minds think alike, here are a few related quotes from different great minds:

"One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision"

-Bertrand Russel

"The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool"

-William Shakespeare

"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"

-Charles Darwin, well despite his ridiculous theory of evolution, have to commend him on his gifted philosophical mind.

to share a little bit of how I got around to learning about these quotes, it was a nice gloomy Sunday evening when I decided to ponder upon the existence of humanity around me. Post-human interaction, I also started to study why humans behave the way they do? Why some say things they don't mean. Why some say things they don't like to hear themselves. Why some believe in being something they are not. Yes many many questions but most importantly, I was trying to understand how a person can say something that is of his or her greatest concern, yet act the complete opposite, perhaps just perhaps, without realising it. 
So I found the Dunning-Kruger theory, looked into Bipolar disorder, read a little bit of Freud's psychology of projection etc etc, you know, stuff normal people do before the monday blues. 
I'd love to go into psychology. psychonomist. That sounds better than it means. 

Conservation of Energy

I have too much energy to let it go to waste ( but being here doesn't make that much difference). Speaking of energy, I wonder if someone's attempted to calculate the total amount of energy in the world. Conservation of energy states that energy in an isolated system cannot be created or destroyed, but can only be changed from one form to another which undeniably means there is a constant amount of energy in the world (and universe). Obviously no one attempted to enumerate knowing how immeasurably enormous present measures of energy are. Whenever I think of science, I think of my sister the engineer in the family who never fails to relate science back to the Creator. If energy is not being created of destroyed, then it could not have existed without a creator with infinite power. MashaAllah. How great God is.

let's now transform my energy from being awake to sleeping. 

Grammar lesson #1

The difference between "can" and "may"; the former indicates capability or possibility, whereas the latter grants us permission to do something.

I.e. Can I drive your Rolls Royce? Well, yes, if your feet can reach the pedals and you can understand the concept of a steering wheel.

May I drive your Rolls Royce? Over my dead body.


Taken from " My Grammar and I".

I've been spending my Sunday afternoon reading on grammar. It's bizarre because the more I think about it, the more I question how I got through school with straight As. It's quite unthinkable, but that's a whole other matter.

I didn't come here to talk about grammar to be honest, I just thought that was something interesting to share.(but ofcourse you know the above fact already)

on another note, I never really understood the difference between apathy and paranoia. That line has been erased, drawn, erased again, and now it's quasi visible with smeared lead on both territories. In other words, it's a pretty messy area. well perhaps not for you (lucky).

Have you ever felt like you don't care about this or that, but in truth, you're just scared. Treating people as places and places as people because you believe(strongly) that everything is temporary. but there's another part of you that is scared that if you put any importance in places, people and anything else for that matter, you'd be...affected. In more ways than one.

Well, that's tough. 

let's talk

i've always wanted to be one of those people who are so incredible at speeches, like martin luther king jr, obama, those people on ted tv. the more i try the harder it gets to be honest but i did manage to   reveal some of the secrets of those who are eloquent :

1) they talk alot or

2) they are clear -minded or

3) they read alot or

4) they watch alot of tv.

way to point out the obvious( i have the tendency of doing that)..

but seriously, i'm not a naturally talkative person. i can talk non -stop if i have to or when i'm with certain people, but i find talking very hard to do which is why i believe i was born verbally challenged. 

after giving much thought to it, i realise that, we really dont have much to talk about. we have much less to say than we acually think we do. like when i was catching up with a friend, i really dont feel like talking about my life and what i've endured because for one, if i've gone through some difficult times and survived it, i dont see the point in telling the story because i've made it through well and good. when something good happens, i dont wanna talk about it because i dont even want to give anyone the chance of thinking i'm gloating. ofcourse not everyone is that mean, but preventive measures beat the crap outta having to fix a complicated situation. 

furthermore, if you dont tell anyone anything, when something goes wrong, you have noone else tIo blame but your self and i personally feel being hard on yourself is better than blaming others for your weaknesses or mistakes. whatelse can we talk about? my interests? oh if only.. work?  boring.
food?i'd rather eat than talk about it. politics? too lazy to argue with varying opinions when you know you're right and by right i mean you're just as intolerant as everyone else invloved in that discussion.

i might have gone off tangent here, but i guess if i wanna be like martin luther king i gotta forget about a and brush up on b,c or d. perhaps I shoud forget about b too. was probably born a scatter brain.

i feel a little bit psychotic.

if you can't pretend you're happy, why not avoid people when you're not.

Don't even know if I make any sense

“So you see, Good and Evil have the same face; it all depends on when they cross the path of each individual human being.” 
― Paulo Coelho, The Devil and Miss Prym

Last week I had a discussion with two friends on this article:

http://www.suhaibwebb.com/personaldvlpt/reflections/people-leave-each-other-but-do-they-return/

twas very enlightening and a friend brought up what I felt was the most intriguing part of the article that relates to an even bigger scope of things and I quote :

Allah (glorified is He) tells us in a very profound ayah (verse): “Verily with hardship comes ease.” (Qur’an, 94:5). Growing up I think I understood this ayah wrongly. I used to think it meant: after hardship comes ease. In other words, I thought life was made up of good times and bad times. After the bad times, come the good times. I thought this as if life was either all good or all bad. But that is not what the ayah is saying. The ayah is saying WITH hardship comes ease. The ease is at the same timeas the hardship. This means that nothing in this life is ever all bad (or all good). In every bad situation we’re in, there is always something to be grateful for. With hardship, Allah also gives us the strength and patience to bear it.

That has always been one of my favourite verses, but I too, had misunderstood it the same way the writer did.  I know the general presumption is that, hardship is God's challenge for us and ease is God's reward but it certainly works the other way as well.

I read the Devil and Ms Prym (good read, I recommend it) before I even read the article and was deeply troubled by the above extract. It seemed like such a horrid and somewhat defeatist idea to believe in but a small part of me did any way. Perhaps everything God has furnished us with, whether it's our wealth, intelligence, status and even the most abstract paraphernalia such as our ideas, thoughts, assumptions, etc, has two faces, but I do believe it is not as straightforward as being good and evil. From the interpretation of the Quranic verse I realised that, my fear arose from the very two faces of my presumption; acceptance that life is a cycle, uncertainty of life's cycle. When hardship falls upon me, I beg God to provide ease, when I'm at ease, I constantly worry about my downturn. This unhealthy situation stems from my lack of understanding.

Relating the quote to the verse, what we make out of everything God has given us defines the face of it and this face changes with time. It will keep on changing until our very last breath but one thing for sure,  it is written for the faithful that everything happens for a good reason.

internationalists

" All around the world, countries are developing strong national sentiments. and that's not good; it's time that our worries and concerns be not just national but global. Now the world has to develop internationalist sentiments because we wouldnt be internationalists or possess a doctrine of worldwide solidarity if we began to blame other nations."

Fidel Castro.

"that's the reality of bani Adam, it's a pathetic state"

Of civilisations

pardon me for recycling my posts. this is taken from my journal written sometime 2 years ago when i was in Dhaka. I was thinking about dinosaurs and the theory of evolution when my sisters and I started talking about great civilisations before us.

"about a year and a half ago, a bengoli couple( Miraj and Shumona) who were acquainted to Dad came to Malaysia for their honeymoon and I somehow became their tour guide in Kuala Lumpur. Bengoli people are generally very big-hearted and hospitable so if they are fond of you, they make sure you know it. I try not to say this and perhaps I would never in a million years let myself think this even with people close to me, but this couple is very fond of me. I did after all spend a week bringing them all around KL. It's human nature to have a strong sense of gratitude towards people's help and hospitability. So even though we met only that time in Malaysia, I became like family to them. 
They would always email me to come visit them here, and here I am finally. So today, they came over and decided to take me to out. We ended up going to Shumona's Dad's house which was extremely awkard for me cause I'm like "The Guest of the House" and I'm just a kid. It would have been different if my parents had followed, then I'd just be the daughter of "The Guests". Shumona's dad(perhaps a man slightly older than my dad) came out to entertain me. He was a bewitching learned man so we had a lot to talk about. He started telling me about the Egyptian civilization and continued expressing his fascination and admiration for History which led to us talking about the nature and destiny of a civilization. He said, Alexandria was called the Lost City because part of the city is now lost underwater. C'est la vie. The world will turn upside down to end a civilization. Like the nation of Lot (Prophet Luth, PBUH). That is the cycle. 
With the flash floods, mudslides, tsunamis, scientifically speaking, the physicality of the world may indicate a mark for the end of our civilization. Looking back into history, even thousands of years before the birth of Christ(PBUH), this seems relevant. Untill now, noone has yet to discover the technology behind the construction of the Pyramids and the mummification process. Untill now you can't find anyone comparable to avicenna and the likes. We are no more advanced than those civilizations before us. Only our modernity and technological convenience led us to think we are. This does not go to say that our civilization is a weak one. In contrary to that, this is highlighting that every single civilization has had its profound achievements. However, the lessons behind the decadence and fall of all the different civilizations made me think, noone, no nation, no society, can escape their fate. No nation is too profound for collapse. We will have to face what is already written whether we like it or not. 
I love this thought. The thought of being a part of a civilization instead of individualism. 
Anyway, do I really think our civilization will come to an end soon? I have no answer for that. If soon is 50 years away, then perhaps yes. I have forgotten what is the point of this post "

the Theory of Self Interest

"Our society right now is in a crisis, but a lot of the crisis is a direct result of misguided priorities of people that put everything into themselves and forgot about others. When you begin to give up self interest, and think about the common wheel, God will take care of your self interest.  When you focus on your self interest and forget about and the common wheel, God will cause you to even forget your self interest. They forgot God so God caused them to forget themselves."

We've got clear moral guidance so who cares whether Adam Smith was right or wrong.

nineteen hundred and nineteen

Come let us mock at the great
That had such burdens on the mind
And toiled so hard and late
 To leave some monument behind,
Nor thought of the levelling wind.

 Come let us mock at the wise;
With all those calendars whereon
They fixed old aching eyes,
They never saw how seasons run,
And now but gape at the sun.
 Come let us mock at the good
That fancied goodness might be gay,
And sick of solitude
Might proclaim a holiday:
Wind shrieked— and where are they?

 Mock mockers after that
That would not lift a hand maybe
To help good, wise or great
To bar that foul storm out, for we
Traffic in mockery.

 William Butler Yeats Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen