The last class of my professor’s life took once a week, in his home by the window in his study where he could watch a small hibiscus plant shed its pink colour. The class met on Tuesday. No books were required. The subject was the meaning of life. It was taught based on experience.

(Image:Here)

This is the last paragraph from the book Tuesday with morrie, by Mitch Albom. I read this book twice and it’s really inspiring book with the normal English words as well as the simple explanation.

This the old book, which the first published in 1997. It was based on the real life between Mitch Albom, the writer, reporter and columnist with his old professor Morrie Schwartz. His old professor suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a disease that related to neurological system. Unfortunately, there is no cure for this fatal disease, in fact the patient have to go through the decay in the body function. ALS melts the nerves and left the body a pile of wax. The patient lost the control over muscles, so the patient cannot walk, move and standing. And finally, over the time, patient will dead.

Instead of mourning his disease, Morrie make a decision to narrate his story to Mitch. At least, his philosophy of life will teach others. Morrie walk that final bridge between life and death, narrate the trip. The class between old professor and young man took place on Tuesday.

(Image:Here)

The Lessons
There are many lessons in this book and below are some of them that I wanna share with you:

1)Feel the pain of others
What do you feel when you seen other people suffering in other part of the world? Do we really care? Or we just watch without feeling anything, feeling that we should have some kind of responsibility to help them.

Morrie as he suffering from this disease always feel closer to people who suffer than he ever did before. He feels the pain when he saw on TV in Bosnia running across the street, getting fired upon, killed innocent people.

How about us? Do we need to suffer first before we can feel sorrow for other?

2) Don’t Scare of Death
It is interesting when Morrie said
“When you learn how to die, your learn how to live”.
Giving our situation as a muslim, this quote totally correct. Islam is always asking his followers to remember death because by reminding it and the life in the hereafter, our behave will changes.

Morrie continued, “ most of us walk as we are sleepwalking. We really don’t experience world fully because we’re half-asleep, doing things we automatically think we have to do”.
And facing death changes all that.

3) Family: the basic constitute of society
You might recall what on the thing I have wrote few months ago on title what get married? and on of the point I is that marriage is the basic of any civilization. Look this current situation especially inside our country, many of the social problems arises as the result of unstable family. Children are running away from family because the parent doesn’t have time to spend with them.

4) Go through life as it is
It’s a normal character of human being to have feeling afraid of new things. We are afraid when we want to go for the first interview. We are afraid to present a class project in front of people. We are afraid to speak to others. We are afraid being alone if people we love left us. But when we have gone through those things we feel relief. We know what the feeling: loneliness, anxiety, shyness etc. and how to face it.

The idea is that are those feeling are our emotion. Don’t feel afraid to face it. Once you experience it, you can know what’s mean of having those feeling and start to feel other emotion.

Morrie said:”if you hold back on emotions-if don’t allow yourself to go all the way through them-you can never get to being detach, you are too busy of being afraid.”

5) Don’t Fear of Aging
Most of women fear of aging. Some of them obsess to the cosmetic products as the way to eliminate wrinkles in the faces and other signs the she is getting older. They want to look beautiful in the eyes to their husband and other people.

Moorie look to this fear in different way. He said that aging is not just decay, it’s a growth .As you getting older, you become more mature and because of it you live a better life.

6) Money
Morrie insisted that people always used money as substitutes to others. But after all, they not satisfied with all these things. We chased something that uncertain and have no limit.

So, instead of chasing for money and wealth that will never satisfy your desire, you better offering others what you have. It’s not mean only your money, make charity to needed people but also offer your talents to others, your time and your concern.

7) Marriage
Morrie show his concern about current loving relationship amongst young people. Many couple could only live as husband and wife for few months and end with divorce.

The problem with the young couple is they don’t why they have to get married. They don’t know what they want.

Most of them don’t realize when they get older like Morrie, having the loved one is so important. When you older, sick and need full attention, your loved one which is going to sit all the day with you and try to comfort you.

Quotes from the Book

“Accept what you are able to do and what you are not able to do.” (p. 18)

“Learn to forgive yourself and to forgive others.” (p. 18)

“So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They seem half-asleep, even when they’re busy doing things they think are important. This is because they’re chasing the wrong things. The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning.” (p. 43)

There is no foundation, no secure ground, upon which people may stand today if it isn’t the family. (p. 91)

“ . . . If you’ve found meaning in your life you don’t want to go back. You want to go forward. You want to see more, do more. You can’t wait until sixty-five.” (p. 118)

“Money is not a substitute for tenderness, and power is not a substitute for tenderness.” (p. 125)

“Love each other or perish.” (p. 149)

@aMuslimHouse.com-Let’s us pray for our brothers & sisters that are effected with the current earthquake and tsunami in Japan.May this natural disaster reminds us….

Carilah cinta Tuhan, nescaya kemudiannya kamu akan bertemu dengan cinta hamba.

Saat saya membaca buku ini, Bara Cinta Canberra, terasa jiwa saya dibawa jauh ke benua Australia, Canberra. Dengan gambaran suasana Canberra yang baik, ayat yang ringkas dan bunga-bunga bahasa yang indah, karya lham Hamdani ini saya kira cukup menyuntik semangat anak muda seperti saya untuk menjelajah, membawa diri ke negara orang. Ternyata, pengalaman penulis sendiri yang berkidmat di Suruhajaya Tinggi Malaysia di Canberra, Australia digarap dengan begitu baik sekali dalam novel ini.

Watak Ikhmal yang dipersembahkahn dalan novel ini sangat mengagumkan. Ikhmal, anak muda yang kembali ke daerah Canberra, membawa diri setelah kecewa cinta ikhlasnya ditolak oleh bapa Nia. Kedatangannya kali ini untuk mencari cinta yang benar, yang sahih, cinta Tuhan. Di Canberra, cinta hamba telah datang menyapa , Nia Suraya, gadis diplomat yang melukakannya atau Melissa, gadis berbangsa cina yang menumpang kasih. Gadis manakah yang akan menjadi Bara cinta Canberra Ikhmal? Nak tahu, anda bacalah sendiri ye….

Salah satu perkara yang saya suka akan novel ini ialah penggunaan gelaran ‘dikau’ dan ‘daku’ yang digunakan oleh Ikhmal dan Nia Suraya sewaktu cinta mereka berkembang mekar suatu ketika dulu. Penggunaan kedua-dua phasa ini menimbulkan suasana romantik tatkala membacanya. Buat peminat-peminta photography, novel ini juga sesuai dibaca oleh anda, kerana watak Ikhmal yang digambarkan sebagai peminat photography, jadi banyak teknik-teknik photography diterangkan terutamanya menggunakan kamera DSLR. Seperti mana novel Islami yang lain, novel ini turut menyelitkan kisah-kisah sejarah islam yang dapat dijadikan ikhtibar kepada generasai muda. Kewujudan watak Mak cik Marwah dan Izzudin al-Qassam yang berasal dari Palestin menjadikan novel ini serba lengkap,bukan sahaja berkisar tentang cinta tetapi juga sejarah dan pejuangan seluruh umat islam dalam pembebasan Negara Palestine.

Setelah selesai membaca novel ini, apabila direnung kembali, Watak Ikhmal yang digarap sedikit sebanyak adalah reflection terhadap hidup saya.

Novel ini bukan imaginasi kosong semata-mata tapi sarat dengan pengajaran yang mampu menyiram semangat terutama bagi anak muda yang berkelana di luar negara.

Untuk novel ini, saya beri empat bintang………..

“aik, sal buku ni gak yang kau beli? Kan buku ni untuk perempuan? Macam la tak da buku lain lagi ”. Kata seorang kawan

“ entah la, mungkin sebab cover dia yang cantik kot”. Saya menjawab.

“ ehh..ye ke? Entah-entah kau dah ade kot, sebab tu kau nak baca buku tu, jadi kau akan lebih faham tentang dia”. Dia cuba mengusik.

That conversation between me and my friends happened few months ago. My friend argued with me why amongst the many book available in the bookstore, that book (A Walk through Life, Issues and Challenges through the eyes of a Muslim Woman) become my choice. I bought that book long time ago in a bookstore but only finish reading a year later.

I don’t really know why, but one think I’m really sure myself, I always excited when I go to bookstore. I read variety of books, history, religion, politics, science, ideologies etc. Any books that seem to be interesting and will benefit to me, I will not hesitate to buy even though it may cost a lot of money.

I always wonder about women.

My wonders to the women based on the fact the patience and hardworking that shown in my mother’s life. For the last few years my mother used to be my inspiration. The struggle, hardworking, and never give up that built up inside her soul inspired me when I was studying in the university. At that time, perhaps because I already mature, I started to realize how special my mother in my life. Every time I look into my mother eyes, I can feel a kind of spiritual energy transfer that can not be described by any energy transfer formula that ever learned in the school or university. That spiritual transfer that always motivate me at the moment when I feel depress, lonely and at the time when I lost my life. The only thing that can describe this spiritual transfer is the love of the son to his mother.
Perhaps, that is the only reason why I feel very enthusiastic to read this book, to understand more about women, thus understand also the special attitudes that have in my mother as a woman.

The book had been written by a woman, so some part of the book seems to be more inclined and biased toward the woman. But it’s ok, because as a reader we need to be a smart reader.

Here is some of the important points that I get from the book.

1)Women and men are not same
As prominent Muslim scholars form US, Yusuf Estate said, men and women are not same. But there is fairness between them. If you be able to understand this concept, you can see how wonderful Allah swt created the human being. Men and women have been created with their own characteristics to fulfill the role and responsibilities that have been placed on them.Man being created with strong with deeper voice, strong and tough. That’s why man can play him role as protection to the wife and children.
“ Men are the protector and maintainers of women, because God has given the more( strength) than other , and because they support them from their means……….”-an-Nisa’ 4:34

On the hand, women being created with soft personality. A woman normally has melodious voice, beautiful and petite. A woman is submissive, more emotional, caring, patience and always precise in whatever she does. That what make woman different from man and be able to wake up in the middle of night when the newly baby crying, pending for the milk. Man, on the other hand, will continually sleep even he is the one who notice the baby is crying (opps, not all man like that laaaa..).

2)The need for a man
Like a man who needs a woman to support and give strength in his life, the same thing goes to a woman. A woman hopes that man can lead her to sail the life to the future, to provide a good life not only to both of them but also to their coming children. For the Muslim, the task is more, not only to sail a comfortable life in the future, but also to make sure the path they are going through is according to the Islamic principles. Even, in Islam, the purpose of married itself is to attain the pleasure of Allah. No love can be put above the love to the Almighty Allah. In fact, the love feeling between different genders consider as one of the sign in Allah creation;
“ And among His Signs is this, that He Created for you mates from among yourselves that you may dwell in tranquility with them, and He has put love and mercy between your( hearts); verily in that are signs for those who reflect.”-Surah Ar Rum 30:21.

If I’m not mistaken, in Islam when a person get married, she or he is already consider fulfill a part of his religion. It’s mean here that, if the love between the spouses is because of Allah, the marriage and they newly life can bring close to the Allah. Otherwise, if the love because of nafs, then they married may end up with failure in the future after they feel bored with one another.

Married make everything between a man and a woman halal, thus protect the society from the social problems and created the future generation of Muslim with the peaceful and Islamic environment.

3)The Sex Life
The title ‘The Sex Life’ might see to be not appropriate and sensitive to be discussed. But as the 23 years old young man (which is should be mature enough..he..he..),I think it is reasonable to discuss here.

The one which had been born as a normal person cannot deny the important of the sex. Even though you may have many reasons for getting married, the sex desire for sure is an important reason since to it is a part of human requirement and Islam make it halal by allowing marriage.

In the some society, they tend to believe that a woman duty is to serve husband only, so perceive in her mind that husband sexual desire should be fulfill first and forgetting her own need. There are also those who advocate that the wife has no right to refuse the husband right for sexual intercourse, where as the wife no right likes the husband for sexual intercourse. This opinion perhaps, not in the line with the purposes of marriage which is as complement to each other. A wife is a garment for husband and husband is garment for the wife. So, how could be in the sexual matters which related to husband and wife and can create a loving between the spouse can be only the right of the on part only? The role of husband to fulfill and satisfy his wife‘s sexual need can avoid a wife from committing zina out of despair or frustration from being neglected by husband in sexual matter.

4)Nurturing the children
When you are still single, you are feeling lonely. You feel like there is something wrong with you and there is some emptiness in your heart that you need to fulfill with. Other than fill your heart with the taqwa to Allah, you also know that as human being, you need a person that can be your life partner until the end of life. So, you start to find and get married and you thanks to Allah, because at last the emptiness has been filling with the present of a loving one. As life goes on, you start to feel bored with a new life. Then, you start to realize that boring in a marriage life can be eliminated by the present of children and start to plan for it. That’s how the life going on. With the father, mother and children, that’s what we called as family.(Baby’s picture: here)

Children are the gift from Allah swt. They are trust form Allah to the parents, so parents have responsibilities over children and otherwise. Children can be light to the parent if they grow up with the Islamic values being installed in their soul and can also being a pain if they grow up otherwise. Children are born pure and the parents that responsible to shape a child attitudes to what ever their want to be in the future.

There is a story of a man who brought his son to the umar al Khattab and complaining his son act that not respect him at all. Upon hearing, Umar r.a said “o boy, don’t you know what right a father has on his son?

The boy then asks “o commander of the faithfull! Do the children too have right over his father?”

Umar r.a replied by “first, he should search for a good mother. He should marry with virtuous, religious women, and must not marry any questionable nature and doubtful character. Second, he should name the child with a good name, and third, he should impart religious knowledge of child and teach Quran”.

The son replied by said that none of the right had been fulfill by his father.

This story tells us how important of a woman to find a good and righteous man to be a father of her children. The same is expected to a man to search a righteous woman, so that they can nurture and grow up the children to be good person in the future and provide the Muslim ummah with good generation that can built again a great Muslim civilization like what we had previously.

The above points are only few important points that I pick from this book.

That’s it for this entry. Thank you for reading….

P/s:I wish happy mother’s day and happy birthday to my mother. She will celebrate her 49 anniversary( if im not mistaken) this coming friday ,15 may.

::Faisal
::9:12 pm, in Library
::Wednesday,May 13,2009