picture in my mind

I know I should sleep soon, and I will, because I am going to improve on my sleeping habits (also my eating habits! this course has made me eat more. not good!). Friends, and to date, at least one member of the faculty, have commented on my looking sleepy/exhausted. So must stop the unnecessary, embarrassing attention. And damn my eye bags lah; so clearly visible with the littlest shortage of sleep.

But! I just read someone's sweet post about how comfort from God comes from the most unlooked for places, and I had to come here and... say how true it is, I think. And that you would never have realised, or noticed, God's little gifts, had you not been at the lowest of the low. And then it makes me realise, how strangely, the worst times in your life can turn upside down completely and become the best times of your life, because it made you realise God's truly around and listening. What could be better than that, honestly.

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Also, last night, while cleaning up, and doing my normal mulling around, I thought over again about the polygamy issue I was discussing with some friends the other night. The first time the idea of polygamy settled in my brain as a truly understandable concept was when I was probably 14 or 15 and we had come back from religious classes from Masjid Maidin on Sundays. I was so upset and angry, that I cried in the car, and my granny and mum were like trying to comfort me with unsatisfactory explanations, and my brother was like, "What's the matter with you, can't you chill! Relax lah!" Well, easy for him, he's a boy, isn't he!

Clearly, my feminist tendencies were showing way early, ohohoh. But seriously speaking, I felt crushed that God Who I know to be unfailingly fair and just would do that to women. Mostly, I felt irritated that nobody could give a satisfactory explanation why God would let such a thing happen! And as I grew up and learnt more, the very realistic aspects for the implementation of polygamy made itself manifest to me. And at a very... realistic, detached level, I could completely understand why polygamy was okay, or even necessary in some cases. And I accepted it. But, on a personal and deeper level, I could never reconcile the idea of it with a God Who was to me the True Protector of the dignity and worth of women. There were other times I had cried over it again because I just couldn't understand it. Because I believe that one's true nature is supposed to incline to everything in the religion, because it's true. But how could a woman be made to feel okay about sharing the person she loves? It felt to me, in the scheme of things, that women were somewhat belittled.

So I was thinking that I would ask God after I died, that very question. And in restrospect, I could say I was a bit haughty about it, and like all, "How could You, God." :( Astaghfirllah. And then a while later, when my thoughts had drifted away a little, the answer hit me with almost the force of a ton of bricks, that I started crying almost immediately.

I realise that women had been looking at this the wrong way the whole time. Men too, but it matters less from their perspective. But for a woman -- the answer came to me in one word, compassion. I realised that God had gifted at least one thing to woman more than man, and that is compassion. And that God allowed polygamy because he had placed enough compassion in women to actually let it work. It would never work the other way round! If you think about it, only women would eventually, after being insanely upset and throwing pots and pans at said despicable husband (haha), concede that okaylah, I won't kill the second wife (although exceptions exist) because what would happen to the poor children and the poor second wife? In general, women have the greater compassion to forgive and be self-sacrificial. And put the importance of others into consideration. Men, driven by large egos, are more known to break the relationship once the wife's infidelity is discovered, whereas women are more known to forgive and try to make things work. (I remember reading this in the Straits Times when all that fiasco about straying husbands was the talk of the nation, with the Jack Neo and Tiger Woods scandals.) And I'm sure there are many more examples. It all started clicking in place for me, and it made sense, finally.

Not saying that I am actually okay with any of this happening to me, God forbid! It would be a trial I would fear to bear. But that fundamentally, I finally understood and accepted that this whole polygamy thing exists, perhaps because women are so great. And that God never had it because oh, He lets the men do whatever they want, doesn't matter the poor heartbreaks women throughout history had had to endure. But that He had put such a powerful responsibility on women; that men may suck, but love them anyway. For that makes you greater in the eyes of God? I couldn't believe I thought so little of God before.

This theory gives me comfort, it does. Oyasumi, I shall let my thoughts simmer in my dreams.