When we were younger, we had our lives ahead of us. We want to explore and try new paths. Now that I am older I feel that there would always be too many roads to explore, plus I’ve done some road a few times.
What I need to do now is to prune the branches of my life so that the selected few can be cultivated to bloom- with whatever little energy and life left in me so that I can make somewhat of an impact to this world.
Impact might be too strong a word- I mean – to make a difference that counts in- in this life and the Hereafter.
After turning away from world riches ( not the real riches, but the dream and effort of getting them) and fame, he he, I’m left with my family, my work, my khidmat masyarakat, and myself.
Ok- family: running at minimum intrusion. Two grown up kids, three growing up boys – a matter of waking them up in the morning to send them to school, and fetching them home; a little toddler, who’ll probably grow up with my regular benign neglection. Oh yes- also a low maintainance husband. Should I say that I’m doing ok in this area?
Work: Being on sabbatical, I might be biased in judgment. My dream is to run my work on the minimal maintenance mode, though I had vague memories of trips to Kota Bharu and jumping down from the van to teach for ten hours marathon, and night meetings for supervision on top.
I still hope to be able to – heh heh- float through my work. Say if, the people in charge were to hand me my prof madya, and say, that I should be satisfied with that, I could forget about research and writing, and just float on teaching the same subjects again and again? heh heh.
Well, ok, let’s plan it to be somewhere in between free floating teaching, but let’s say I plan my work to be finished during office hours , do you think I could still devote some hours like two hour every other day, or two days of half -days for yayasan work?
Things I have given up: ( thought I still keep them in my dreams)
to start and finish the numerous books in my head, the academic ones, the social ones, the self help money earning ones, and (sigh!) the creative self-expressions
ok, book writing I can’t give up the dreams, but I have never yet started on trying to make it a reality.
Other stuff that I have really given up on:
recording wonderful nasyids by children – ok nadiyah- not that important
of writing for children – no nadiyah, you do not have time for that, forget even the dreams- in syurga ok?
of trying to open a pondok. There are too many pondok anyway, plus you already have a yayasan to run.
a zadul maad koop? – can, but put that under your yayasan scheme, which means it is the 100th down in the list of priority
to start my own business and earn my money instead of a salary? – nadiyah- only do this if you get sacked, okay?
vegetable gardens, cili padi, kunyit, soft sawi for the picking – ha ha ha no comment on this ok?
being an active ustazah and reforming the world- yeah yeah you can keep this dream, but how about reducing it to teaching one or two people how to pray
world famous blogger- yeah yeah. sure. like you can always come back here once a year to type a few lines for your FB friends to read.
I have this wacky sayings fro somewhere which I thought was cute:
Never before have so many people with so little to say said so much to so few.
he he – exactly
You can call yourself world famous blogger, nadiyah. won’t cause you a cent, and wont’ hurt anyone in the process. define world as Those who know you- haggle them to read you entries- done. but of course you have to type in something at least once a year. and please could you fix your typo?
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