What is my Higher Purpose? What am I here to achieve or accomplish before i depart, have I got a mandate to fulfill or am I obligated to complete a course of action that will benefit the whole, the world? How can I when I am still struggling to get my personal act together after all these years? These are tough questions questions that I have been confronted with ever since i set upon this journey of self discover as I am positive what most of like minded people do at some point in their lives. I have been making excuses and looked for justifications for and against all these questions and I really have not found any concrete answers that i can rely upon to be the real and not just another illusive concept to set myself adrift again upon another trajectory and often I keep finding myself lost or adrift again with no sense of definite goal and this too I believe many are struggling with and most have given up trying. To live without have the least inclination of making an effort to find an answer to these simple yet hard to deal with questions is really not an option for all those who are awakened at the very least towards some spiritual calling in their lives.
Life to me is not all about survival alone, it is not about how much money you can make or how many cars and houses you own in one life time and to prove this I have my twin brother's life to reflect upon. and till this date I am not convinced nor impressed by how he has turned out to be. Many would jump to conclusion that I am envious of his wealth and well being; I am most definitely not in the least. As a matter of fact I wish he had been brought down a notch from his high pedestal of so called material wealth which makes his spiritual stance seem a fake or a show off. My twin brother I feel deep inside is a very angry and displaced man who from years of trying to reconcile with him for our childhood differences has revealed an unforgiving and hard hearted man by nature especially off course towards his nemesis, his twin brother. The fact that we were raised apart for the first twelve years of our childhood lives does not help much and is still a sore point to be content with. It was through no one's fault that this happened for no other reason than the fact that my family was living below the poverty line. Due to the same reason three of us were left behind to be raised by others with me being adopted by my uncle. In this case I was considered the most fortunate as I was raised by a good provider and my mother's younger sister, my late auntie who took care of my daily upbringing. My immediate family lived apart from the rest of the main family and thus I rarely saw or played with my twin brother growing up although later we attended the same primary school until the family moved to Terengganu on the East Coast where my eldest brother had a teaching job. I was left behind in Penang along with two elder brothers, one adopted by a Malay family while the other by a Chines family. These were my second and third eldest brothers whose lives needless to say was not easy.
I have written my family life growing up on many occasion in this Blog and I am still dealing with the very same issues today, this morning. Why? It is simply because when I woke up this morning and making all effort o be cheerful and happy while doing the dishes I am still brought down by the thought of how I have drifted away from my twin brother and how toxic our relationship has become and and worse of all how sad I feel despite how comfortable my life has been these last few years living with my two children. It is like having a carcass of an albatross hanging around my neck that lets off a bad stench which every now and then over powers my predisposition or my well being. I have a feeling that until I have good sense of reconciliation with my entire siblings I will never find the peace that i seek. It's like the devil has a hold on me through my family history and no amount of spiritual practice is going to heal this state of affairs, it seems we are destined to take our guilts and shame to the grave with us. Primarily I feel my in laws has been a catalyst to our descension as siblings and I hold it to their doing that has turned us against each other and this I will testify if and when I stand before my Lord in the after life. I have wanted to lay this on the line for a very long time but held back simply because I have been accused of 'looking for someone to blame.' Now I am letting the worms out of the can and these worms have been festering me for most of my life but I have kept them inside because of not wanting to hurt my siblings' feelings. However two of my eldest brothers have passed away and I was closest to them when they were alive and understood pretty much of their struggles. These were the two that grew up estranged from the family, raised by strangers and even their wives had axes to grind for one reason or another.
I love my brothers and sisters and I feel very sad that in their old age they rarely sit at the same table and talk of their lives, to forgive and forget and to unite as a family unit that has survived life's trials and tribulations before we all exit this life. I feel that this will never happen, not in this lifetime as the narrative of our family line has been commandeered by the In Laws. I am the youngest and as such I am not suppose to raise any issues where the family is concerned especially when I have lived abroad a good part of my life and my lifestyle is not a good model to be emulated, but i have been a witness with a deep conscience knowingly or otherwise over the years and I have seen how my brothers especially my eldest and twin brothers have been cowed by their wives to the point of dismissing our immediate family as irrelevant and this is what has been keeping me awake most of my life. Every time I visited Terengganu I had to drop in and say halo to my siblings like it or not as it is mandatory by the laws of Islam which says never to sever the blood ties among one's siblings. There were times when my elder sisters would urge me to pay a visit to my brothers and against my will I would. Many a times too when I do visit my brothers they viewed it as looking for a handout and often my visit with then end up in animosity or a fake show of love between siblings. I am as good as a stranger with their children or worse as I don't have any idea who is who anymore. it is sad that children were being influenced to pass judgement over their adult because the parents do not see eye to eye; this is growing up as good Muslims?
If I seem aggressive in my assessment of my family situation especially towards my in laws it is only because I have to face my own demons from within me. I am not the most congenial person when it comes to my relationship with others, especially those closest to me. I have most of the time being shut off and distanced for my intrusive demeanor and my straight forwardness when in conversation. I like to let my thoughts be expressed regardless of the consequences which often causes me this rift with others. I am far from perfect in character and most in need of being silenced in my opinion than allowed to discuss family matters. However I am writing as i mentioned earlier only because these are the matters that have haunted me my whole life and may the Lord forgive me for my regurgitating these thoughts so as to release the pressure that threatens to cause an implosion from within; this is after all the purpose of keeping an ongoing journal is it not? So why am I justifying to myself on why I am letting out my personal feelings of my family? I do not intend to judge or be judged but merely relating what is in my heart and mind and if by chance someone reads these thoughts and feelings and feel that I have transgressed against any of them, well I welcome the interaction. I welcome any accusation or chastisement if it helps me to understand better of my own errors and perceptions. I have stopped apologizing for how i feel at this day and age and it is not my intention to stir any form of animosity or raise any ire on account of how i feel but I am simply liberating my soul from the bonds of ignorance that have plagued me about my family.
My older siblings were all highly intelligent people with their own gifted qualities of which not many outsiders have especially not among the people they were married have, and this is why they were married into these families. I say this with commitment and pride and not because of any form of comparison or lowering the dignity of those they married; as always the Devil is in the details where this is concern. As I have mentioned somewhere in the past, my Mother was born of a royal bloodline from Deli, in Sumatra, Indonesia as so was my Grandmother and my Grandfather was a Bonafede Artist a close friend and confidant of the Sultan in Medan, we are descended from two highly respected clans not just any common folks. Our genes are sliced with two highly cultured bloodlines and I know my siblings would rather bury these facts with them, I am not them. I would like to let it be known that the intelligence and beauty that is apparent in the children and grand children of my Grandparents were not accidental. I have been to Medan and looked into the truth of he matter and so did my uncle and we have proven the authenticity of these claims but on his advice I chose to remain silent on the matter; again the Devil is there in the details and the details is best buried or so it seems. In a letter written to me from my eldest brother to inform me of my father's death, he said that with the passing of our father the Ceylonese bloodline of the family is buried for good. Perhaps he had suffered the most in life due to my father's errors and weaknesses and thus it was why he made the claim; my father was a drunk his entire life that we knew as so was my Grandfather. They were both however great Master craftsman and artists and to me most importantly they were true to their wives till the end of their lives.
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