Yes even christmas came and went and I hardly felt any jubilation or anything special on this day that in the past used to be a part of my life where i would look forward to going home and finding my family waiting by the Christmas three and eyballing what was underneath. Nope not this time and far from it my children and i spent our day with me working at my cousin's catering business stirring the pots while my kids kept themselves glued to the TV. No one mentioned Christmas as it I felt would only usher in memories of my wife and how she loved Christmas times. Furthermore i had only four ringgit in my pocket which i left for my children to split between themselves for the day's meal. I latter arrived home to find that they had bought a can of tuna spread and a loaf of bread to go wirth which i gratefully shared with them. Yes life's a bitch and then you have to be thankful for being alive! Yessir! God don't like your complains much less listen to you moan and groan about life all through your god given span of allotted time on this planet! Well tell it to thiose who owe me three thousand Ringgit and decided that it is okey for them to delay the payment so long as i do not make any fuss about it!
Suffering without bitterness a friend once told me and this is a tough act to follow even for the best of us and Allah is the 'Tester' and test us He will to the max untill there is no more room for us to back but the corner where we will have to stand and face the ultimate test or perish there in. There are those the so called luckier ones who breezes through life without too much terpidations or even a minor jolt when it comes to destitution and poverty or social and psychological pressures and often enough they have even paid their dues for a ticket to heaven in the afterlife by their piety and chritable acts in this life. Then there are those who are always at logger heads with their own Maker so much so that as they aged and die their lot never seem to improve but gwets worse as time wore on by. They become more and more dejected and succumb to defeatism and despair. They give up their ability to rebound and take charge of their lives as they once used to blaming it on ageing and fate, I am becoming such a one and how I pray that before i die I will snap myself out of this quagmire and salvage my pride and dignity as a man worthy of calling himself the wholesome person created in the image of the Creator.
My most memorable Christmasses were the ones that I had celebrated in the US especially those I had spent in Green Bay, Wisconsin when I was till married to my first wife and spent the Christmas days with my mother in law and my son present. There was always piles of snow and sliding down the hill or riding slegh rides with son was part of the Christmas package. Later in the evening as almost everyone gathered in the tavern for a get together on Christmas Eve it was like in a whole different world where love and joy and genuine handshakes was for real and everyone was into making eachother happy even if it was for a day or two of their lives. Christmas gifts as commericalized as it seems to be makes everyone felt special to give and receive reagrdless of how small or how great they recieved. It was still an act of giving and receiving and it touched my heart everytime i sat and watched others opening their gifts amidst the warmth of the fireplace and chill outdoors. No matter what is said about Christmas or for whatever reasons it is being celebrated, this once a year celebration has my warmest feelings towards it and all the memories i had connected to it will always outweigh the traversities I am facing today. In shaa'Allah, there will be days like th
ose in my life yet before i give up my holy ghost.
What and when was my my most memorable Christmas?
It was in 1990 and my wife had left for Illinois to spend Christmas with ther parents. I had to work Chrisatmas eve because there was an emergemcy at H&H Ship Services that had to be rectified or we would be facing a loss of a vacuum truck. The problem was that the driver, Norman Peterson had sucked intot he vacuum truck waht was wet cement and which was quickly solidifying insde the tank. had we let it sit we would have a solid piece of concrete inside the vaccuum truck. So we had to work emptying the content before it solidifies and it took us all evening obn Chrismas eve crawling wihtin the comfines of the vaccuum tank scrapping and shoveling sand concrete and water out of the tank.
Whe it was all over i was standing in the middle of market street waiting for the bus to take me home to Haight Street and i had bought some chicken and other stuff to cook myself a Christmas dinner in the form of a chicken curry. As i stood there in the middle of the street where there was an island for the bus to pull alonside I noticed a man half laying on the concrete slab struggling for his breath. He looked like he was having a seizure and no one was paying any attention to him as he laid there his body jerking and I felt sorry for him. I felt after a few seconds that I was in a vacuum where there was no sound whatsoever and i was looking at a silent movies with everyone else moving in slow motion, some walking pass by the man struggling on the slab with barely a change their paces. I walked over to him and dropping my packages began to stroke his chest slowly as I felt his chest was about to explode from his struggle to breath. His hand was clenched in a tight fist and his mouth was foaming with blood dripping along with his saliva. I stroked his chest and whispered into his ears to breath slowly and to stop struggling and as i did this he began to come to, his breathing seemed to slow down and his body started to drop on to the slab. As he began to gain control of himself I notice all the details in his features from the tight frightened painful look his facial line for line began to relax, the panic expression replaced by a calm dignified appearence.His fingers began to uncurl and he was letting go settlin into more gentle rythmic breathing. I kept massaging his chest and along came a police officer who asked me to stay with the man for a little longer untill they got help for him. As soon as I heard the abulance arriving I lifted my hands from the man's chest and as I felt the final contact between the tip of my fingers and his chest I felt his heart beating and it sent chills through me. I grabbed my stuff and head fo
r the bus that was also about to stop at the Folsom and Market Street bus stand.
Sitting on the bus i felt the vacuum around me again but this time I felt strangely relieved of my aches and pains from work and my having to face the ordeal of bringing a man back from the edge. I felt very peaceful inside and outside and when I arrived home there was a kid sitting oin one of the houses with a bag pack beside him. He looked like he too was going to spend the Christmas by himself and so I offered him to join me but he turned me down politely and accepted the wine I had bought for myself when I offered it to him to keep himself warm for the night. I found out he was from Phoenix, Arizona and had just arrived that evening.
Although i had to spend the vening all to myself i was fully contented and the Christmas I celebrated that evening was the most joyful one i ever had after I had finished my plateful of chicken curry and topped with all kinds of spicy stuff i could pick from the grocery store in China Town, downtown San Francisco. That Christmas eve I came to understand how great life is and how fragile we are.
Even if life is a bitch sometimes, there is nothing that is not worth living for if your heart is ever thankful for what you already have.
In Islam we are taught to be thankful always no matter how worse off we are as we know deep within us that there are those worse off than we are. We can bitch and moan about the way life has been treating us the injustices and the insanities but we are humans for so long as we are breathing our life will be like a roller coaster or the wheel of life there days when you are down and days when you are up. When you are down look forward to getting up and when you are up look forward to coming down. This is riding the waves or going with the flow even if as the Buddha has pointed out that life is suffering my good friend Peter Oyimbo reminded me that it is suffering without bitterness!
SELAMAT HARI RAYA AIDIL ADHA!!
A VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A PROPEROUS AND PRODUCTIVE NEW YEAR!!
Suffering without bitterness a friend once told me and this is a tough act to follow even for the best of us and Allah is the 'Tester' and test us He will to the max untill there is no more room for us to back but the corner where we will have to stand and face the ultimate test or perish there in. There are those the so called luckier ones who breezes through life without too much terpidations or even a minor jolt when it comes to destitution and poverty or social and psychological pressures and often enough they have even paid their dues for a ticket to heaven in the afterlife by their piety and chritable acts in this life. Then there are those who are always at logger heads with their own Maker so much so that as they aged and die their lot never seem to improve but gwets worse as time wore on by. They become more and more dejected and succumb to defeatism and despair. They give up their ability to rebound and take charge of their lives as they once used to blaming it on ageing and fate, I am becoming such a one and how I pray that before i die I will snap myself out of this quagmire and salvage my pride and dignity as a man worthy of calling himself the wholesome person created in the image of the Creator.
My most memorable Christmasses were the ones that I had celebrated in the US especially those I had spent in Green Bay, Wisconsin when I was till married to my first wife and spent the Christmas days with my mother in law and my son present. There was always piles of snow and sliding down the hill or riding slegh rides with son was part of the Christmas package. Later in the evening as almost everyone gathered in the tavern for a get together on Christmas Eve it was like in a whole different world where love and joy and genuine handshakes was for real and everyone was into making eachother happy even if it was for a day or two of their lives. Christmas gifts as commericalized as it seems to be makes everyone felt special to give and receive reagrdless of how small or how great they recieved. It was still an act of giving and receiving and it touched my heart everytime i sat and watched others opening their gifts amidst the warmth of the fireplace and chill outdoors. No matter what is said about Christmas or for whatever reasons it is being celebrated, this once a year celebration has my warmest feelings towards it and all the memories i had connected to it will always outweigh the traversities I am facing today. In shaa'Allah, there will be days like th
ose in my life yet before i give up my holy ghost.What and when was my my most memorable Christmas?
It was in 1990 and my wife had left for Illinois to spend Christmas with ther parents. I had to work Chrisatmas eve because there was an emergemcy at H&H Ship Services that had to be rectified or we would be facing a loss of a vacuum truck. The problem was that the driver, Norman Peterson had sucked intot he vacuum truck waht was wet cement and which was quickly solidifying insde the tank. had we let it sit we would have a solid piece of concrete inside the vaccuum truck. So we had to work emptying the content before it solidifies and it took us all evening obn Chrismas eve crawling wihtin the comfines of the vaccuum tank scrapping and shoveling sand concrete and water out of the tank.
Whe it was all over i was standing in the middle of market street waiting for the bus to take me home to Haight Street and i had bought some chicken and other stuff to cook myself a Christmas dinner in the form of a chicken curry. As i stood there in the middle of the street where there was an island for the bus to pull alonside I noticed a man half laying on the concrete slab struggling for his breath. He looked like he was having a seizure and no one was paying any attention to him as he laid there his body jerking and I felt sorry for him. I felt after a few seconds that I was in a vacuum where there was no sound whatsoever and i was looking at a silent movies with everyone else moving in slow motion, some walking pass by the man struggling on the slab with barely a change their paces. I walked over to him and dropping my packages began to stroke his chest slowly as I felt his chest was about to explode from his struggle to breath. His hand was clenched in a tight fist and his mouth was foaming with blood dripping along with his saliva. I stroked his chest and whispered into his ears to breath slowly and to stop struggling and as i did this he began to come to, his breathing seemed to slow down and his body started to drop on to the slab. As he began to gain control of himself I notice all the details in his features from the tight frightened painful look his facial line for line began to relax, the panic expression replaced by a calm dignified appearence.His fingers began to uncurl and he was letting go settlin into more gentle rythmic breathing. I kept massaging his chest and along came a police officer who asked me to stay with the man for a little longer untill they got help for him. As soon as I heard the abulance arriving I lifted my hands from the man's chest and as I felt the final contact between the tip of my fingers and his chest I felt his heart beating and it sent chills through me. I grabbed my stuff and head fo
r the bus that was also about to stop at the Folsom and Market Street bus stand.Sitting on the bus i felt the vacuum around me again but this time I felt strangely relieved of my aches and pains from work and my having to face the ordeal of bringing a man back from the edge. I felt very peaceful inside and outside and when I arrived home there was a kid sitting oin one of the houses with a bag pack beside him. He looked like he too was going to spend the Christmas by himself and so I offered him to join me but he turned me down politely and accepted the wine I had bought for myself when I offered it to him to keep himself warm for the night. I found out he was from Phoenix, Arizona and had just arrived that evening.
Although i had to spend the vening all to myself i was fully contented and the Christmas I celebrated that evening was the most joyful one i ever had after I had finished my plateful of chicken curry and topped with all kinds of spicy stuff i could pick from the grocery store in China Town, downtown San Francisco. That Christmas eve I came to understand how great life is and how fragile we are.
Even if life is a bitch sometimes, there is nothing that is not worth living for if your heart is ever thankful for what you already have.
In Islam we are taught to be thankful always no matter how worse off we are as we know deep within us that there are those worse off than we are. We can bitch and moan about the way life has been treating us the injustices and the insanities but we are humans for so long as we are breathing our life will be like a roller coaster or the wheel of life there days when you are down and days when you are up. When you are down look forward to getting up and when you are up look forward to coming down. This is riding the waves or going with the flow even if as the Buddha has pointed out that life is suffering my good friend Peter Oyimbo reminded me that it is suffering without bitterness!
SELAMAT HARI RAYA AIDIL ADHA!!
A VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A PROPEROUS AND PRODUCTIVE NEW YEAR!!
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