Ms. Vulnerability

بِسْــــــــــــــــــــــمِ اﷲِارَّحْمَنِ ارَّحِيم

Getting out ideas can sometimes feel like extracting water out of a hard rock.
Ya Allah please inspire me. Please give me ilham yang bernas.


Improvising Eid

Di saat ramai bersuka ria berya dan tgk qurban, saya kena ponteng kelas pagi utk pergi solat raya. That's my sacrifice. I have to plan ahead and force myself to have a meaningful eid-ul adha. So, by not missing solat raya is one way to go. I also received an invitation to join the Indonesian community for kenduri. But at noon, I'm helping out a friend who was invited to give a presentation on being Muslim in South East Asia. The audience would be a class of undergrad students, doing South East Asia Studies. Right now I'm trying to mentally squeeze the juice of my brain to get ideas for the speech and slideshow. Then I've an important project to submit. To go or not to go? I have a strong enough reason. My work inshallah will be done by then. I'll just submit it through email and miss the critique. If there's anything that makes me nervous, it is to miss and be behind in class. I know a lot of my friends would go to classes anyway. And that's fine. They're waiting until the weekend to celebrate it. Hmm. Let's enjoy a lil bit of adrenaline rush. There is more to life than school and homework.

In making my eid day distinctive and significant than any other days, I'd also like to go for the presentation in my baju kurung. In the evening, it would be Girlfriends Makeover Time!!! :D You see, orang sini takda traditional costume sgt. And I managed to persuade my friends to wear my baju instead. lol. And after that, we'll go out and have dinner together sambil sharing ke. Sounds like a plan, right...yep. I'm desperately trying to make my eid one that is meaningful and memorable. Just because my parents and lil bro aren't around, doesn't mean it should be less meaningful. It'd be my second raya haji without them. The first one was two years ago when I had my raya in Penn State, berprogram dgn kawan2. So, let's improvise. Eh but then, how would I tackle the sacrificial spirit of this year's Eid-ul-adha? I mean, that's what it's all about, right.

To Love at All is to be Vulnerable

Well to tie up with my unintentional rants up there, I guess, I should do some reflections on Sacrifice.
So, a christian reverend friend of mine shared this the other day.

"To love at all is to be vulnerable" - I mean yeah it's graphically interesting and all...but what kept echoing in my mind was the quote. Statement tu macam benar tapi tak aci. I mean love is the source of strength and compassion but why it is marred with an ugly connotation of weakness? As though we saying "To love at all is to be hurt/uncertain/insecure". How sad is it to love. As they say, words can either make you or break you. In my case I was in the verge of being breaking because in many ways, the quote is true!...but who would want to be vulnerable?! 

Later that evening I checked my inbox and I got a love letter from my dear Oprah :) Well ok. It was a newsletter. But still. The one time that I decided to check newletters from Oprah, I found out that Brene Brown will be doing a six week online course on the Gifts of Imperfection. Who is she? I had no idea. Out of the blue, I decided to google her up and found her TED talk vid. Oh heyy, this is the one that I watched some years ago and remember it to be very funny and empowering. So who is she again?

Vulnerability Action Figure

"Dr Brené Brown has spent the past twelve years carrying out ground-breaking research into vulnerability, courage, worthiness, and shame.A best-selling author and award-winning educator, Dr Brown's books and talks have been hugely influential in tackling the myth that vulnerability is a weakness."

Ternganga kejap. Subhanallah. Ape ni oh Allah. You found us in darkness and You brought us to light. When I chekced out the video again, I realized that the reason the quote stood out to me so much was because maybe I was subconsciously in that state. The punchline that hit hard on me was when she said  "Vulnerability is our most accurate measurement of courage." I've been cowardly vulnerable lately. 

“The original definition of ‘courage’ . . . is from the Latin word ‘cor,’ meaning ‘heart.’ And the original definition was to tell the story of who you are with your whole heart. And so these folks had, very simply, the courage to be imperfect. They had the compassion to be kind to themselves first, and then to others, because, as it turns out, we can’t practice compassion with other people if we can’t treat ourselves kindly. And the last was they had connection, and—this was the hard part—as a result of authenticity, they were willing to let go of who they thought they should be, in order to be who they were, which you have to absolutely do that for connection.” - Brene Brown

That is all true of being vulnerable except that I miss the whole concept of vulnerability. It doesn't have the final say of the outcome but rather it is about living in the moment of capability /  susceptibility / potentially / uncertainty....(enter the adj here). Those who dare, dare to fail...or win. Those who dare are opening up to the lives of "Oh wells" than "What ifs", "I tried" and "Now I know". It's a win-win situation where the experiences of failing and winning matured you because you went through the process anyway. 

Sacrifice & Qurban

So, sacrifice comes into the picture when I see part of being vulnerable is to practice sacrifice. For me, sacrifice spells out all that is positive and humble. 

One may say, "I gave my time for her". Try comparing that with "I sacrificed my time for her".
Sacrifice by def;
- to surrender or give up, or permit injury or disadvantage to, for the sake of something else.

- to dispose of (goods, property, etc.) regardless of profit.

If you're giving away more than what you would get back, isn't that putting yourself in the state of vulnerability? Oh yes...it's nothing different from putting yourself in the state of tawakkal. The same concept more or less. Going back to my rants, I don't know if missing classes would be worth it - uncertainty - but I would nervously sacrifice them anyway - daring to - for the sake of a meaningful Eid ul Adha - permitting injury or  the best recovery. We'll see how it goes ;)

Please pray the our presentation goes smooth and amazing. And again, I don't know what I'm doing nor why at some point did I think it was a good idea...but  I know for sure it is something that I need to do. 
Allahumma yassir wala tu'assir. Rabbi tammim bilkhoir. Birohmatikaya Arhamarrohimin.
YaAllah permudahkanlah jangan dipersulitankan dan Kau akhirkanlah dgn kebaikan.