MAKE PEACE WITH GOD

I had a conversation with my colleagues in the pantry today about the happenings around the world. Again, everyone was saddened by the earthquake, which rocked Pakistan, Afghanistan and India, leaving some 20,000 people dead and thousands of others injured.

This happened barely a week after the bombing of Bali, and a few weeks after the Hurricanes Katrina and Ruth.

The tsunami, which wiped out Acheh and other parts of the world, is not even a year old. Many people already forgotten about it, dismiss it as history.

Is this a sign from God that the world is coming to an end? Even a free thinker like me, who believe that all religions are equally good, starting to believe that, no matter what religion you believed in, there must be the same divine being behind all these things.

Acknowledging the presence of God comes a long way back, as old as earth. People prayed to stones, trees, animals and were afraid when eclipses of the sun or moon took place, which considered as omen.

My Muslim friends gave me a note on what is about to happen during the Ramadhan, and I could see one by one, the things as stated are falling into their places.

First of all, death of the King of Saudi Arabia, which is the starting point of the said prophecies, followed by destructions in the United States (hurricanes) and then, eclipses of the sun and the moon, which scheduled to occur on October 3 and October 17 respectively.

I had an accident on October 3. When I went to the police station to lodge a report, I met my ex colleague and found out there were two other accident cases on the same day. When my friends wrote me e-mails to check out how I was, everyone said they knew of someone else met with an accident on the same day.

Things like these are mind boggling and if you sit down and ponder long enough, you could see that things are happening because mankind mistreated the earth. Pollution, corruption, abusive usage of raw materials and selfishness are part and parcel of all destruction, and mostly greed, the mother of all devastation.

It is heart wrenching to see human’s greed in catastrophe. Governments misappropriate donation, people from all walks of life kept collecting donations for natural disasters’ victims - in restaurants, pubs, mamak shops, shopping centers, etc. We do not know for sure whether the money is really channeled into helping those in need. The thing we could only hope for, is the conscience of these people, collecting the money – be it genuine or not, they are answerable to God. I am always wary of the associations or bodies who are collecting donations. There is always lack of transparency in utilizing the money donated.

Each and every one of us, I am sure, are still chasing after material wealth, and do not give much thought to spiritual wealth. Every year, we alter our houses or workstations, according to feng shui, or pray that our wealth would improve, hence it would make us a happier person.

Every year, we are still plodding on the same spot, doing mediocre things to get on with life, hoping that we would somehow gain enough to make ends meet or make a fairly comfortable retirement.

We worry about not having enough to spend. We worry about not having a partner. We worry about our sexual orientation. We worry about how our children would turn out to be. No one is to be blamed. These are indeed life itself.

But we never give a thought of after life. We never think of what happen next when we die.

I am not trying to say that, chasing after material wealth is not a good thing. And I am not saying that you have to be a monk, nun, imam, pastor or priest either. The key word here is balance. We could have all the money in the world, but if we are too selfish, or too full of ourselves, it defeats all purposes.

And I am not talking about charity either. Doing charity is good, but it should be done within our means. For me, charity begins at home. If we treat our family members good, and help them whenever a need arise, I think it would suffice rather than you give your money to charity – make a big hoo-hah out of it and, at the same time, you ill-treated your own siblings or parents. Family should always come first.

.. And I didn't say that you should be slacking in living a life, either.

My mother is a free thinker. Not many people at her age of 61, could be this liberal. She said, it doesn’t matter what religion we believe in, it is our hearts that matter. As long as we don’t cause hurt to others, we are fine. After all, no one came back from the dead and tell you not to do this or that. When we all die, whether we would be buried or cremated, our bodies would return to the soil.

Every day, we see struggles for power and money. Rich nations getting richer and poor nations getting poorer. There is an uneven distribution of wealth not only in other countries, in our own country as well. Everyday, there bound to be a new outbreak of diseases, or wars where human beings taking each others’ lives, threats of terrorists and bombing which seem to be accepted as a routine nowadays, etc. At times, I just don’t want to read the newspapers as it upsets me.

Sometimes I am glad that I am not an important person in this world, with overwhelming power or money, more than I could handle. Or being famous and subject oneself to scrutiny of people and had to conform to the strict standards of the society. I am glad that I am neither rich nor poor. I am glad that I was put to play the roles of a daughter, a sister, a friend, a cousin, a niece and a godmother. For those who are still wondering what purpose we are here, I guess this is it: To play the roles we are destined to be, in order to make other people’s lives a little easier, and I hope I had done my parts well.

Death is a certain thing. There is no need for us to live in fear of it. At the end of days, irregardless what religion we believe in, I believe we need to make peace with God and ourselves, sooner or later, but it better be soon. We are to seek forgiveness from those people we had hurt, to learn to forgive ourselves as well, to right what we have done wrong, to stop whatever things that we know is wrong but keep on doing, to stop preaching and practise what we preached, and to learn to live life a day at a time, as if it is our last.