Questa è Enida

I am reading four books at the moment. Not all at once, of course, though I wish I could. Sebab dah lama sangat not sharpening the saw, I feel as dull as any kepala lutut. I am forever reading Da Vinci Code – a year ago I stopped at page 87. I picked it up again and seemed to stop at the very same page. Three months ago upon hearing Da Vinci Code played by Tom Hanks was coming in May, I clicked on the Microsoft Reader icon on my iPAQ again and went to the last page read. It was page 87. I am nowhere far from that page today.

My angelbuddy just bought me the two books by Mitch Albom. The Five People You Meet in Heaven and Tuesdays with Morrie. Though I can hardly put any of these down, I have disciplined myself to reading only three pages of each at one seating, to be fair. My special reading time comes at bedtime when I get to read as many pages as I like from my favorite book.

“People make mistakes. Sometimes very serious ones. As often as not, the mistakes aren’t deliberate or personal. Sometimes people just don’t know what they are doing. This means that if, in the past, people have behaved badly towards you, it wasn’t necessarily because they meant to be horrid, but because they were as naive, as foolish, as human as the rest of us. They made mistakes in the way they brought you up or finished a relationship with you or whatever, not because they wanted to do it that way, but because they didn’t know any different.

If you want to, you can let go of any feelings of resentment, of regret, of anger. You can accept that you are a fabulous human being because of all the bad things that have happened to you, not in spite of them. What is done is done and you need to just get on with things. Don’t use the labels ‘good’ and ‘bad’. Yes, I know some of it is indeed bad, but it is how we let it affect us that is the real ‘bad’. You could let all these things get you down, fizzle away internally like some emotional acid making you ill and resentful and stuck. But you will let them go, embrace them as character forming and in general as positive rather than negative.”

~ Richard Templar, The Rules of Life
Rule #3

I have been thinking and looking back a lot after reading this rule. Thinking about the mistakes I made in life, hurting quite a few people along the way. There were times when I justified those wrongdoings by telling myself that I had been wronged by others many times myself. So what?

So recently, when a friend set up an online group for a uni program I was in…I couldn’t help but feeling like I was sent to the past. I was sent to deal with some unresolved issues and emotions from those years. I was afraid of judgement then. The fear was so vivid that I held myself from participating in the forum for the first bit.

I was young, stupid and cared too much about what others thought or said about me. Too much for my own good. It all started the day when a housemate told me that I was weird and that many people hated me for the reason unknown and unexplainable. I told you I was stupid – I believed her. I cried myself to sleep that night and woke up the next day a new person: I was the new female hunchback of Notre-damn! And so for years I carried the burden of not being liked and I stayed away from the group.

I didn’t have many friends back then. And when I did, somehow I managed to hurt them before they got to hurt me. I sabotaged many friendships, and I hated myself more than others could possibly do me. Nevertheless, I found a few people from a few different faculties that didn’t know my ‘history’ and found friendships in them afresh.

Writing this today, the one word I could think of that would best describe the then me would be ‘MISUNDERSTOOD’. I put the blame on no one for not understanding me then. No one. Since I am now a Rule Player, I accept what is done is done. I was young, stupid and didn’t know any better. So were my friends. In fact, I can name a few people whom I could not figure out back then. I hurt in ways that I was, too.

And so it is…
Just like Richard Templar said it would be.

I know I am okay now. And okay will I be. I just hope that the people I had wronged and betrayed have grown wiser and stronger – because they chose to be. Like I did. And even if they didn’t, I fully understand that: Some people grow up, the rest just grow old.