What a lovely analogy.

 and it's a wrap on the March weddings! phew. 

:)

We insisted at the end of the night that we take a photo in our classic-4 formation, haha.

Pigey, may you live a happy future with your beloved husband!

it's been ~13 years? to more life milestones together!

---

this! is very very true sometimes, Alhamdulillah.

I met up with a friend (acquaintance? when does a friend become defined as one? this topic is fit for another post, so I shall stop digressing) yesterday.

She made me think about some things. Like the fact that it is really a brave and awesome thing, to fight against one's ego, one's lower emotions, and stick to what is noble and true. You become truly beautiful by it. Because it is always far too easy to cower, to flee, or to rage -- and even if you did, people would go, Oh well, no wonder, such-and-such happened, duh! But if you give up your right to be hurt or angry or upset, you become something so wonderful and so inspiring.

And you wonder why more people don't do it. Be this kind of beauty.


---



Reading Checkmate turns me into a complete... sap, for lack of better word.

I have decided there is honestly nothing more romantic and heart-rending than what is in Checkmate. Thank goodness for all the five books previous for their other themes, because this much beautiful romance for all six volumes would have turned my brain into utter mush. I literally have to clutch my chest when I read these bits over -- because so gorgeous, heart-thudding, and sad at the same time.


From the beginning, intuition had told him not to touch her, and intuition had kept him from speech which would define, like a cobweb in dew, the invisible thing that had happened. His love showed itself as the air does, by its infinite space and the life-giving properties of its presence. 

Nothing like reflecting on the state of this ummah 

to get my head out of my own personal and petty difficulties.

This documentary -- about the relatively recent Arab spring/Egyptian revolution, thanks to my brother's Netflix subscription, was what we watched this afternoon, 

and which subsequently led to our bitching about the state of governments 

and the level of corruption in this world.

Subhanallah, this gets me so angry. I can't imagine myself working in any field to do with human rights and politics, and not transforming into a crazy zealot, seeing the injustice of it all. Like these human rights lawyers who work internationally and try to persecute for war crimes -- they are quite literally heroes. Fortunately, I work at the ground level, one-on-one with individuals, and their health/education problems. If I had to constantly deal with corporations and institutions and simply put, evil and power-hungry entities -- I think I might self-combust from anger. My heart couldn't possibly take it. Not that we can indefinitely escape the effects of problematic institutions that rule our lives.

It's a conundrum.

He was right. He had already trodden this path and found it barred: he knew the landscape and was already, in his pain, accustomed to it. It was she, blinded by the brightness of the flame, who could not yet believe that there was no way of dwelling in it.

-- Checkmate

This book is a giant quotable.

Here is non hoom. Here nis but wildernesse.

"Do you know, Philippa, what an unsuitable match is? It isn't the kind I shall have with Catherine d'Albon, or even the kind you will make with young Allendale. When one human being is trapped in the net of another's grand passion: then it comes about; and it is tragedy."

- Checkmate

Damn my need to understand things.


On real life: Need to be genki tomorrow -- 8 kids scheduled and it's the March holidays! Which means there's a likelihood they will all turn up and I will need to be on high gear for 8 hours straight.

March has been a busy month.

The long-awaited wedding for Hudy and Fadzli. All's well and good for the two of them, finally. Alhamdulillah!

Photos from the past two weekends:

The nikah night -- love the colours.

Khai being a hilarious, macam-paham photographer, 

next to the official photographer.

These two funny friends of mine. 

You guys make me laugh, in a good way, and make the tough times enjoyable.

It is oftentimes I wonder, how the friends I have became the friends I have.

Which is a point of argument I have had with Marli.

Do you choose your friends, or do they simply walk into your life?

Just like romantic love, it probably is a little bit of both.

The lovely couple.

And then us being bridesmaids! 

All decked in coral and lace.

It should be mentioned that us being bridesmaids involved having a mortifying 15 min or so on stage, giving our well-wishes in front of the entire audience and being interrogated by the very chatty MC about our love lives or lack thereof. I have never been so publicly harassed about being single before. I always feel stumped (and often annoyed) by the question, "Why are you still single?" 

How do you answer questions like that!

Love the flower-forest-pelamin.

In between the weddings, we managed to have the promised birthday trip to Batam for my Dad, where we did his favourite thing i.e. full body massage all round for everyone!

And we took local public transport (to Harbourfront station) as an entire family for the first time.

Could do with more R&R.

"Oh my heart,
Don’t become discouraged so easily.
Have faith.
In the hidden world, there are many mysteries,
many wonders.
Even if the whole planet threatens your life,
don’t let go of the Beloved’s robe
for even a breath.”
~ Mevlana Rumi

Alhamdulillah, more of the science saying what the Quraan (and apparently many other spiritual systems too) has always been saying about the heart.

The Quraan has always mentioned about how the heart thinks 

(literally, God often asks and reprimands, "Do you not have hearts that think?")

I've been reading up a lot on infant-attachment theories, parenting behaviour, theory of mind, and sociopathic tendencies, in view of my current social skills clinic training. Man, is this stuff fascinating or what. For example, if you often leave a child to cry and console itself in the first 6 months of life, then you've missed a crucial emotional bonding development window; after which, the child grows up not really caring if the parent or a random adult attends to them i.e. they don't have proper emotional attachment with a parent (honestly, it's natural for kids to scream bloody murder until they get, specifically, Mummy, and not anyone else). If you leave these children at childcare or with random strangers, they're likely to cry less or not cry at all. Which sounds awesome -- at first. Until you learn that it's a common symptom of sociopathic individuals! Who cannot form true emotional bonds, cannot trust, and cannot empathise!

I'd just like to say, I am very grateful for my parents. How much a parent affects the development of a child in the first few years of life especially is unspeakably huge. It affects one's entire life trajectory, almost. This is probably why in the hierarchy of gratitude, after Allah and the Prophet s.a.w., parents come next.

Everyone grows up learning how their parents fall short in some ways. They're human too. So when you're old enough to reflect and think, learn to forgive them, and be grateful for them, and return their love. How some people can stay resentful to their parents is plain immaturity to me. Do you not know that even your most basic functions of living, your ability to give and receive love of any kind, and your ability to think rationally, can be attributed to those first years of life when they didn't abuse, neglect or abandon you? If they had even in some small way done any of that, Subhanallah, you would have grown and turned out quite differently, likely for the worse.

This is a lovely rendition of Lonely, with a live band. It's been my earworm.

---

This whole business with homosexuality and what you can say, what you cannot say. Haiyah.

Isn't it that as long as you say something nicely, you can say anything? If you say very politely to my face, I'm sorry, I don't agree that people should be short -- do you think I would have just cause to be angry with you? No, right? You have a right to your beliefs. If I feel somehow affronted, hurt or angry, obviously it is my problem stemming from perhaps some lack of maturity or reduced perspective-taking abilities. It is very important that people be able to stand up for their truths, but is also equally important that respect is upheld. 

If people would just be nicer, the world would have at least half the conflicts it has now. Doesn't the Quran say, Speak good or don't speak at all?

By the way, just because coincidentally, my previous post featured a homosexual in a positive light, does not mean either that I agree with homosexuality. I disagree with it actually. I do not believe it is right. I do not believe it should be legal. But this does not mean I cannot think positively about a homosexual person! (because surely sexual orientation does not make up the entire person, right.)

Being in the profession that I am now, this brings me to think about the fact that homosexuality used to be in our old versions of the DSM (which catalogues by diagnosis the Western world's perception of disorders of the mind and heart). And because today, homosexuality has been removed from the DSM, it's been accepted as okay. 

Recently, I'd been reading about sociopaths / psychopaths or officially known as individuals with antisocial personality disorder. These are basically people with damaged empathy systems -- they are unable to feel guilt, remorse or pity and will relentlessly pursue their own gains at the expense of others. Not all criminals are sociopaths and not all sociopaths are criminals, but apparently half of serious crimes are caused by sociopaths (M. E. Thomas, Confessions of a Sociopath). These people tend to be highly skilled and highly deceitful, and therefore appear the image of success in society.

I've been thinking... if morality can be so flexible and homosexuality is considered okay now, then one day, wouldn't being a psychopath be considered okay as well? It's a scary thought. Already, the idea of it is gaining popularity -- just take the well-loved BBC Sherlock who claims to be a high-functioning sociopath. It's just a game of dice, isn't it? Let's see on which side of morality such-and-such profile falls.

Now, if you believe in an absolute truth, then it's a different story.