My relationship with my friends is slowly thinning out and not by any negative conscious feelings about it but just a passing observation as I see or visit less and am easily turned away if i feel the toxicity of being in the same group of people for a long period of time; we are just playing the game like nothing ever changes and we are all seemingly perfecting our own game before we exit the stage. In moments like this one is reminded the emptiness of impermanence, one of the main causes of suffering. As i stopped by the Selera Wawasan Restaurant located on the corner of Jalan Sungai, what used to be called River Road for lack of better name and Sungai Pinang Road, the Yellow House. It was my grandmother's house handed down to my auntie, Mak Timah Bidan{midwife}and now it has been a catering and restaurant run by one of my cousins and his children. This will lead to yet another toxic story if i keep at it, so I will bear witness and let it play itself out. It is not my concern who is the rightful inheritor to the house which is still up and hanging, I was once accused of trying to make claim to the house by my cousin who is a week older than me, whose mother's milk I shared with him to have stayed alive and this my late Auntie told me herself among other sobering stories of my being brought into this world alongside my twin brother. I had attended the weddings of all his children except the last and my favorite one and i could not find the true reason why and do no care dwell on this toxic issue. But i have to keep visiting the house to pay my respect to my cousin sister and see how she is doing. Islam professes 'Silatur Rahim' or the blood ties between Muslims family and friends whereby one do the best to keep the family ties between siblings and their children and between relatives and friends who enjoy being in your presence and they in yours, the brotherhood of the Muslim Ummah encompasses from the microcosm to the macrocosm of humanity; All men are brothers in the eyes of the Lord as all women are sisters in Islam. For this i have tried my best to carry out perhaps as a penance to not having made any contact with my home and family all those years i had lived in the United States; burning my bridges behind me, cutting off all my past so to speak.
I learned the art of letting go at a very young age and not consciously most of the time and in anger half the time. There are a few in my life I would still like to reach out and touch base, catch up and spin stories of the past and to have faith in the future; Insha'Allah! Life is mostly about having strong and genuine relationship with your fellow humans and it need not be in numbers but it should be in quality. Someone who would go that extra mile for you and vice versa. someone whose honesty you never doubted. someone who keeps reminding you of who you truly are and that life is worth living. this kind of someone you want to keep till the end. Islam encourages to start with your siblings but it is not the case often times, then your relatives and then your friends, however friends are most often the ones the ends up being your soulmate, closest to you. I learned my lesson that no man is an island when I was living by myself during my college years in Wisconsin and later three years in Sendai, Japan.
Your other choice is to run to the hills, find a mountain and sneak into a cave and meditate on what it is all about make it your last bucket wish... What else is there to do when you come to realize that it is all an illusion and meaningless, wealth and poverty, pain and pleasure, right and wrong, it is all a sickness of the mind... son't take my word for it, the Buddha said it too.
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