She~the Enigma

She
May be the face I can't forget
The trace of pleasure or regret
May be my treasure or the price I have to pay
She
May be the song that summer sings
May be the chill that autumn brings
May be a hundred different things
Within the measure of a day

She
May be the beauty or the beast
May be the famine or the feast
May turn each day into a heaven or a hell
She may be the mirror of my dreams
The smile reflected in a stream
She may not be what she may seem
Inside her shell

She
Who always seems so happy in a crowd
Whose eyes can be so private and so proud
No one's allowed to see them when they cry
She
May be the love that cannot hope to last
May come to me from shadows of the past
That I'll remember till the day I die

She
May be the reason I survive
The why and wherefore I'm alive
The one I'll care for through the rough in ready years
Me
I'll take her laughter and her tears
And make them all my souvenirs
For where she goes I've got to be
The meaning of my life is

She
She, oh she

A Speech Worth Reading and Sharing

(This was a speech made by Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Anna Quindlen at the graduation ceremony of an American university where she was awarded an Honorary PhD.)

"I'm a novelist. My work is human nature. Real life is all I know. Don't ever confuse the two, your life and your work. You will walk out of here this afternoon with only one thing that no one else has. There will be hundreds of people out there with your same degree: there will be thousands of people doing what you want to do for a living. But you will be the only person alive who has sole custody of your life. Your particular life. Your entire life. Not just your life at a desk or your life on a bus or in a car or at the computer. Not just the life of your mind, but the life of your heart. Not just your bank accounts but also your soul.

People don't talk about the soul very much anymore. It's so much easier to write a resume than to craft a spirit. But a resume is cold comfort on a winter's night, or when you're sad, or broke, or lonely, or when you've received your test results and they're not so good.

Here is my resume: I am a good mother to three children. I have tried never to let my work stand in the way of being a good parent. I no longer consider myself the centre of the universe. I show up. I listen. I try to laugh. I am a good friend to my husband. I have tried to make marriage vows mean what they say. I am a good friend to my friends and them to me. Without them, there would be nothing to say to you today, because I would be a cardboard cut out. But I call them on the phone and I meet them for lunch. I would be rotten, at best mediocre, at my job if those other things were not true.

You cannot be really first rate at your work if your work is all you are. So here's what I wanted to tell you today: Get a life. A real life, not a manic pursuit of the next promotion, the bigger pay cheque, the larger house. Do you think you'd care so very much about those things if you blew an aneurysm one afternoon or found a lump in your breast?

Get a life in which you notice the smell of salt water pushing itself on a breeze at the seaside, a life in which you stop and watch how a red-tailed hawk circles over the water, or the way a baby scowls with concentration when she tries to pick up a sweet with her thumb and first finger.

Get a life in which you are not alone. Find people you love, and who love you. And remember that love is not leisure, it is work. Pick up the phone. Send an email. Write a letter. Get a life in which you are generous. And realize that life is the best thing ever, and that you have no business taking it for granted.. Care so deeply about its goodness that you want to spread it around. Take money you would have spent on beer and give it to charity. Work in a soup kitchen. Be a big brother or sister. All of you want to do well. But if you do not do good too, then doing well will never be enough.

It is so easy to waste our lives, our days, our hours, and our minutes. It is so easy to take for granted the colour of our kids' eyes, the way the melody in a symphony rises and falls and disappears and rises again. It is so easy to exist instead of to live.

I learned to live many years ago. I learned to love the journey, not the destination. I learned that it is not a dress rehearsal, and that today is the only guarantee you get. I learned to look at all the good in the world and try to give some of it back because I believed in it, completely and utterly. And I tried to do that, in part, by telling others what I had learned. By telling them this: Consider the lilies of the field. Look at the fuzz on a baby's ear. Read in the back yard with the sun on your face.

Learn to be happy. And think of life as a terminal illness, because if you do, you will live it with joy and passion as it ought to be lived"

Reflections

1 Syawal...hari kemenangan untuk semua umat Islam yang telah berjaya menghambakan diri mematuhi syari`at Islam agama yang syumul.

Berpuasa sepanjang Ramadhan bukanlah sekadar menahan diri dari makan, minum, bersetubuh di siang hari dan perbuatan-perbuatan lain yang membatalkannya.

Namun untuk kebanyakan dari kita, itulah saja yang kita buat.

Sepanjang Ramadhan, hatiku menangis hiba menyaksikan pelbagai pembaziran yang dilakukan atas nama PUASA! Di rata-rata surau, mesjid lebih-lebih lagi di kawasan yang agak mewah persekitarannya, persiapan iftar lebih daripada keperluan. Iftar, solat, kemudian moreh. Hasilnya, banyak makanan terbuang sebab perut masing-masing sendat berisi.

(Dan aku berfikir, tentu ada insan yang berbuka puasa ala kadar dan akan menangis kesyukuran jika dapat menjamah makanan yang terbuang begini)

Bukan seorang dua yang berbisik pada ku di Syawal ini, ` berat badan ku bertambah di bulan puasa' dan `waktu tak puasa, makan nasi sekali sehari, bulan puasa makan nasi 2 kali sehari' juga 'keadaan kesihatan ku lebih baik di bulan puasa'.

Omongan ini membuat aku ketawa di depan yang berucap, tapi membuat aku berfikir sendiri bila berseorangan. Yang pastinya, ia berlaku kepada ramai dari kita, walaupun kita mungkin tidak mengaku, termasuk aku sendiri.

Soalnya...apakah puasa kita tadi memenuhi apa yang disyari`atkan?

Datang 1 Syawal dan hari-hari berikutnya..open house demi open house, makan , makan dan makan lagi. Walaupun tidak dipaksa menyambut jemputan ke majlis begini, semakin perit dan berat untuk kita melakukan Puasa 6 hari di bulan Syawal yang akan memberi kita-kita pahala seperti berpuasa setahun penuh!

Pada yang terasa, aku ingin sarankan. Tahun depan jika kita masih bernyawa, buat lah open house di hari pertama Syawal sahaja.

Aku bersyarah pada diriku jua!

Esok hari pertama aku berpuasa insyaAllah, setelah 12 hari Syawal menjelma. Semoga Allah menerima puasa Ramadhan ku dan memberi kelonggaran dan keampunan atas segala kelemahan diriku. Dan semoga Allah melapangkan hati ku dari hiba melihat segala kepincangan yang aku tidak berkuasa menyekatnya.