Salam.
It has been a while, me not writing in here. Guess what, we are approaching November, not only November, but November 2020. For the past 10 or 15 years in my life, I have always thought that 2020 would be a very magnificient year, because our leader in Malaysia had introduced 2020 Vision or Wawasan 2020, and due to that, 2020 for me was a year that I look forward to. I was very excited even the younger me thinking that 2020 will come together with a magic spell that will erase all the things that do not make people happy. The innocence of young minds.
2020 at least for me was a year where noone in Malaysia is in poverty. Everyone can eat comfortably without worrying on what would be the next meal. But, come 2020, reality is far from that. Topped with the presence of COVID-19, 2020 came as a big surprise to the whole world. It is indeed true, ‘We plan, and Allah plans. Surely, Allah is the best of planners.’ - Quran 8:30.
How is everyone coping? I hope everyone is well. I was once inclined to sort of ‘advise’ or ‘remind’ others to be grateful on everything, but now I realized it was so naive of me to ‘freely or mindlessly advise or remind’ others on that. It does not occur to me that maybe, the one that read my ‘reminder’ was someone that was not having meals for 2-3 days and perhaps he or she was indeed grateful. So what I had learned from this is I should have focus on improving myself, to listen and observe more. The advice that I thought others need to be reminded of, is actually the one that I need the most. Oh the irony.
In that sense, I am grateful for 2020 for this one thing. I read about this, I heard about this but I don’t know why, I did not feel it was 100% true, until 2020 come with its twist - it was clear to me that Allah is always with us. I don’t know whether this would be TMI or too personal to be shared, but I sort of realized about this with 100% clarity this time, that Allah is always with us. There were instances that I felt like God is far from me, He doesn’t listen to my prayers, and worst of all, is He even there? (Okay, this is getting too personal but I thought I want to pen this here, as a reminder to me).
A good analogy from a book that I am currently reading, ‘Secrets of Divine Love’ on Allah is near, always with us is as below :
“Just as clouds cannot affect the presence and power of the sun’s light, but can alter our experience of the intensity of the light, sin can veil our perception of our inner goodness, but it cannot change it.”
Perhaps I was too blinded by my own sin that I did not see or feel the sun’s light, but the light is always there. I feel assured with this reminder, that everyone is having a fair chance to feel close to Allah if we choose to and our responsibility is to keep going forward with our best effort, with full trust to Allah. 💪
Bye!
