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[edelnash]

I think other people are truly your own mirror. When you see them and somehow you see ugliness, it is you who experience the ugliness inside. I dont know how to put this but somehow these two days journey was tiring because I looked at those mirrors hutrtfully. It reminds me of the sides I am most uncomfortable with - to decide which mirror you actually want to reflect yourself at. I know in the physical normal mundane world, mirror can only reflect a version of us. Whatever we put in front of it, that is what appears in sight. But in the meta-physical realm, this mirror can reflect a lot of the layers. Some mirrors can make you look so low but it reminds be how spiritually high we can be. Or at least how peaceful we are at that stage. That is why almarhum Murabit al Haj said about the eyes of the saint - it's the eyes which become the mirror and their mirrors reflect too deeply inside. Some other mirrors reminds you how you have been staying in certain levels a bit too long. We get comfortable because it seems easy to just stay there. These other mirrors shows you how ugly you are when you see your tendency to comformity. This time, I did saw my reflection on how (my) indeciveness can kill. It is like a disease as if you know you had seen the symptoms several times; you know it will surely comes and infect you; but you act nothing out of it. Indecisiveness kills (me). This short camp reminds me of a state of myself where I should just rise up because it hurts if I stay.

[edelnash]

Gai Eaton said in his great book, ‘The King of the World’, “Everything becomes a blur when you travel beyond a certain speed.”

He then continues, “Distant objects may still be clear in outline, but the blurred foreground makes it impossible to attend to them. This landscape is unreal and the passengers in the express train turn to their books, their thoughts or their private fantasies.” 

This quote came to me during a time of last week - when I overwhelmed (and mixed with excitement, what can you say, young blood) with a lot of new opportunities to weigh out and mostly, must be put aside. Everything becomes a blur when you travel beyond a certain speed .

I asked myself, “On top of trying to become an entrepreneur, who am I in the first place?”

This question didn’t strike as philosophical but not for utility as well. It is a question in between - maybe I had recovered over some level of the dualism sickness, hence, that’s why I don’t feel like it is either or anymore.

I couldn’t bring an artificial me to the ground. In the ‘Courage to Teach’ book, I read somewhere that a teaching job is always a public as well as private job. You bring your soul out to share with the people (yet not up until you sell your soul to that). 

But to talk about soul, as so little knowledge we could have yet sufficient for us to carry on in this world, we as human being must dare to ask, of what this soul is? Scientist can get skeptical, to parade along with the atheists if they would, but the situation is either you try to escape it (not entertaining it or denying it) or embrace. That’s why maybe the good-soul people said that there are no place we can run from him. 

It is not just about the scale of this universe; it is because of that of which our souls are created from. That’s why we are forever indebted but at the same time, grateful for the opportunity. 

 What is human we are talking about?

[edelnash]

Music is a wonderful example of something that is in this world but not of this world. Great works of music speak to us from another realm

Sir Roger Scruton (via themaninthegreenshirt)

[edelnash]

Who knows

I grew up to be strong, I dont know so much on how to be weak so that people can help us.

I realized this when I read The Great Passage by Shion, when the old landlord of Majime advised him on how to try to rely on others.

I also saw this in me, when I watched Deborah character in the Denial film (about the Holocaust denial by Prof. David Irving). Deborah said on how it was so hard for her to not speak anything in the court as she found it hard to put her trust to her lawyers.

That's why, when a guy man up to accompany me in my personal life, it triggered me to 'girl' up too. I saw less significance of having somebody alongside me.

Not just guys, but my families as well. I moved back to my hometown all alone carrying all those baggages, baskets, carriers from the room to the door of my apartment to the lift and then to the bonnet of my car to the door of my hometown house. I literally dont tell anything about INTEC except to my counsellors (and this only took place just because she saw something in me first, not me approaching her). That's the same when I was younger - when Fikry told me he liked me, my resistance not because I dont like him.

But because I felt weird on how people can trust others.

I can come as someone who easy to put trust (I can easily start conversation, works with new people) but I always had that fence in my mind.

Fence where I speculate whether these people will break my trust or not. Fence of whether I should build it higher or thorny.

This Raya moment made me perceive this fence lighter. Maybe to be less risk-averse. Maybe to be less too careful.

Because they made me see how flawed human beings are but for all that, they also made our days despite them having their dark times too. Who knows.

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Balik raya, apa aku terus cakap kat diri sendiri: Okay, sekarang baru rasa nak kahwin. Haha. The power of connecting back to some figments of life.

[edelnash]

If people ask me, what I fear the most, I'll say:

I fear myself. Truly.

[edelnash]

Winston Churchill - tiba-tiba menjadi tokoh yang aku kagumi. Aku pernah tahu dia memang pemidato yang hebat, tetapi menonton Gary Oldman (boleh bayangkan tidak, Sirius Black jadi Churchill haha) melakonkan watak Perdana Menteri UK di ambang Perang Dunia ke-2 itu buat aku gila. 

Aku rasa tidak percaya bagaimana ada sosok manusia yang punya keberanian sebegitu besar, apa lagi di zaman yang begitu mencemaskan itu. Mungkin aku teringin menjadi manusia seperti itu.

Usai menonton Darkest Hour, aku baca ‘Measure What Matters’ yang menceritakan tentang OKR - ‘Objectives and Key Measures’: bagaimana syarikat seperti Intel diupayakn oleh sosok seperti Grove dapat mempertahankan empayarnya versus Motorola. Berbanding MBO (Management by Objective), OKR lebih fokus tentang hasil - dalam masa sebulan, misalnya, apa hasil yang kita sasarkan? Berbanding objektif yang masih sukar dilihat, hasil dapat diukur (e.g. sebulan hendak dapatkan 5 klien baru) dan jika tidak dicapai, lebih mudah dipertanya mengapa tidak berhasil mencapainya. 

Aku sedang dan masih melalui fasa ‘menentukan diri’ - atau aku sepatutnya berhenti mencuba, agaknya. 25, 26 ini memang umur yang sukar. Permudahkan aku ya Allah menerima.

[edelnash]

I think at some points of life we must honestly admit to ourselves that there is a limit (or limits) of being a human - I don’t know why I suddenly come out with this but reading Chris Hedges’ Empire of Illusion, Debord’s Society of Spectacle and recently Scott Malcomson’s Splinternet, I think I am allowed to swallow this feeling.

To feel how we are in the middle of everything and how we (or all the ‘I’) are not the center of everything. This reminds me of how astronomy changed the center of the universe from the Earth to the Sun - as there was a shift of worldview too about the celestial. 

I am not implying that human is left to be hopeless or in vain (as in how Jabariyah believe every action is totally by God and human does not have agency of choice) - but I am looking at that line of limitation.

This question was asked way back years ago, I must say. Maybe when I was 20 or 19. I remember my friend asked me on Facebook, of where that limit is drawn if one wants to keep pushing. 

Again, I am looking at that line of limitation. 

[edelnash]

I want to see the world with these two eyes. Only.

[edelnash]

It had been a while since library is my ideal place to calm down.

[edelnash]

I was sick these entire three days - when the General Election is just around the corner. (This just tells me how unattached I am with that national event - I am sick and what I can think about is my classes) I am good in being absent-minded since I don't know when. When I like something, I only care about that few stuffs related to that. Like when Wak Dee asked me about my expected age to get married, I just laughed because I never thought about it now. It goes back all the way since my debate era. When I stood up for my turn, it never fail me how suddenly all existence around me will cease - I only care about the notion and the process of debating. Only when I sit back on my chair, then all other ceased existence appear to my senses back. (Well, it has been an era to talk about this haha) For me, when I can just think about some specific things without planning that I know I am off to go well. It always work that way. When I decided on MRSM, on joining Worldview of Islam classes, on joining MySisterAxis, on moving on - I am, without I realized this often, quite an instinctual person. I rely on that so often that I didn't realize that is who I am. It has been quite similar for my thinking process too. All these while, most of stuffs I actually can understand better is through this instinctual connection I never plan. But what I do is I just do my part - read, jot down some notes and leave them be (yes, true but funny!) When I push thing a little bit more (to imitate some people I admire), I never succeed. Never. So, I still figure out about this business-self-employed thingy. How should I look at it? How will I learn the most from it yet do things at the practical level at my best too? Let's just cool these questions down for some days more.

[edelnash]

“Nobody has ever measured, not even poets, how much the heart can hold.”

— Zelda Fitzgerald.

[edelnash]

the moon 

[edelnash]

GWM Architecten - Family house, Frasnes-Les-Anvaing 2010. Photos © Dieuwertje Komen.

Keep reading

[edelnash]

Maybe I was like Jojo Didion - immerse oneself in books or at least something bigger to be thought about when one is overwhelmed with feelings. 25 is a critical year I must say - you are left to feel compared with others, so much so you might not so sure on what to become. I still am not sure on the path I should take, though others might suggest to just pick one. I wanna be deeper again. Not just superficially happy. Deeply happy and sure. Maybe that is why I feel related when I read about Majime, the young lexicographer - he is other worldly. He is just dont care and keep on his study how much miniscule his subject could look by others Oh, man. How trivial 25 can be.

[edelnash]

As a knowing being, man is able to distinguish between things, to become acquainted with their specific natures, and consequently to determine his own attitude towards things after his own knowledge of what they are. Now to be not determined by things but regulated by one’s own knowledge of things is precisely what we call to be free.

Étienne Gilson, “God and Philosophy” (via ave-caele-pater)

[edelnash]

History is the only laboratory we have in which to test the consequences of thought.

Etienne Gilson (1884-1978) French philosopher (via philosophicalconservatism)

I never see it (the history) like this - interesting.