What other people say about Prophet Muhammad s.a.w..
"Head of the State as well as the Church, he was Caesar and Pope in one; but he was Pope without the Pope's pretensions, and Caesar without the legions of Caesar, without a standing army, without a bodyguard, without a police force, without a fixed revenue. If ever a man ruled by a right divine, it was Muhammad, for he had all the powers without their supports. He cared not for the dressings of power. The simplicity of his private life was in keeping with his public life."
~ Reverend Bosworth Smith in 'Muhammad and Muhammadanism,' London, 1874
"If greatness of purpose, smallness of means, and astonishing results are the three criteria of a human genius, who could dare compare any great man in history with Muhammad? The most famous men created arms, laws, and empires only. They founded, if anything at all, no more than material powers which often crumbled away before their eyes. This man moved not only armies, legislations, empires, peoples, dynasties, but millions of men in one-third of the then inhabited world; and more than that, he moved the altars, the gods, the religions, the ideas, the beliefs and the souls."
~ Alphonse de LaMartaine in 'Historie de la Turquie,' Paris, 1854.
---
Wah, I'm really bad with names. I can't remember the name of this girl who I did a project with last semester, and I bumped into her, said hi, but couldn't for the life of me recall her name. (And she remembered mine, which makes this worse.) :O It's a Chinese one, which makes it it even harder -- starts with an L, maybe? haiyah.
Feel inexplicably gloomy. Yesterday, I was talking to Shweta in CYZ's class (which was unbearably soporific -- Shweta could tell I wasn't listening from the glazed look in my eyes, I quote her, haha) and started discussing about how much emotions are influenced by hormones. I mean, seriously. It's almost funny -- how you're so distraught for a moment or period in time, and then a week later, you realise that, BAH! It was right before that time of the month. It happened to Mumu too: she called me up in a state of stress and tears, and then a few days later, she established that it was PMS. I felt strangely amused and comforted by this. Like maybe, yes, stupid hormones do take over the control of our physical realities. (Being a woman is stressful, please.)
This by no means, however, diminishes the existence of a problem or extenuating circumstance. The shit and crap we have to deal with is still there. The hormones just exacerbate the response with which we approach said problem. Instead of trying to be logical and rational and to behave as calmly as possible, the emotions become uncontrollable and in the extreme, one can almost go ballistic. Haha. Also, I recall the period in early 2006, when I think I was majorly depressed -- and during that time, I attributed it all to the stresses of uni applications, lack of confidence and feeling lost about life goals etc -- but now, I think it had a lot to do with my thyroid imbalance problem (which has been said to cause depression). Because I think I definitely got better when I got healthier.
Now it makes me want to philosophically contemplate the essence of emotions, if it can be so easily driven by these chemical substances called hormones. I mean, really, how much of anything that we feel is real, huh? I can't recall now where I heard this: but there was a documentary, I think, that mentioned how casual sex is theoretically impossible, because the hormones generated during sexual intimacy is almost too-closely coupled with the hormones they have identified to correlate with the emotion of love. So no such thing as no-strings-attached-sex -- almost inevitably, emotions will develop over time through the existence of all those hormones, and you can bet strings will be attached.
---
How did I start rambling like that when I have tons of work to do? -.-
No comments:
Post a Comment