IRWAN ABDUL RAHMAN
I HAD a good friend back in college, this girl from Ampang or Gombak, if I remember correctly (it's been a while). She sure was attractive; while her looks may not have been supermodel material, she was one of the "hot" ones in our batch, and was always high on the radar of the hormonally-charged young men on campus.
Girls wanted to be her and guys wanted to be with her, myself included. However, what attracted most people to this friend of mine was not her looks – she wasn't the type who cared that much about her appearance, what with her simple sense of style, lack of makeup and the lepak way she carried herself.
What made her the centre of attention wherever she went was her infectious jovial personality; this "bubble of joy" that she had around her, which she happily shared with everyone she met. Almost every sentence she uttered was either laced with a joke or punctuated with a giggle.
Without trying, she lit up the room with her warmth and charm.
One weekend, while crossing the street to the bus-stop opposite our college, she was hit by a speeding motorcyclist. Her long, beautiful hair got entangled with the bike's spokes and she was pulled along by the careening machine like a rag-doll until it stopped by the roadside.
At the hospital, doctors rushed to save her, not giving her much chance for survival, even thinking she was dead once, when her heart stopped beating for a while.
While she was relatively uninjured below the neck, they had to cut open her head to reduce the swelling in her brain, and piece together parts of her face which had taken much of the impact of the accident.
By the time I got to visit her, she was already conscious, and amazingly lucid. I couldn't see the friend I knew – her whole head was bandaged. Lying quietly there, unable to see or speak, she seemed to be aware of everything around her.
Her mother sat across the bed, praying and doing her best to hold herself together.
I held her hand and said "hi", and she replied by clutching mine. Despite everything, the bubbly friend I knew was very much still there, "laughing" with her hand as I joked in my attempt to cheer her up.
Her mum, eyes swollen from crying, began telling me what had happened and understandably, began crying again. And this was when something amazing happened.
My friend started to get angry. She slammed her fists on the bed and kicked her legs in protest, until her mother stopped crying.
Outside the room, her mother explained to me that her daughter didn't like to hear her cry. Even with everything that had happened to her, my sweet, happy friend didn't want anyone to be sad.
Despite the dark and painful hell she was in, her mom explained, she was the one that was holding the family together from falling apart.
I went away feeling utterly humbled and amazed. Humbled by the fact that no matter what my problems and issues were, they paled in comparison to what other people were facing. And amazed by the strength of the human heart.
We all go through personal tragedies at some point in our lives. Life will throw us a curveball or two, and we'll trip and fall on our faces. That's just life.
Life's unfair. People aren't always nice. Lady Luck can desert us and life can deal us a card so bad that it'd seem we've lost everything we've worked for our whole lives or worth living for.
But here's the trick: It isn't about not falling down, heaven knows life is a giant wheel, and we all have our ups and down, good times and bad times, whether we like it or not. The real measure of life is how we deal with adversity.
As someone once said: "Successful people know that it ain't about hitting the bottom, but it's how you bounce back." Success and happiness almost always piggyback on a whole load of failures and paralysing unhappiness.
Yes, naturally, we get upset, sad, angry and feel a void of hopelessness whenever life deals a cruel blow. We're only human. We certainly have the right to mourn a loss or experience grief upon getting bad or sad news.
But think about it: while grieving is a natural reaction, isn't it better for us to move on and get back on our feet? Would prolonged mourning help us in improving the situation? Is there a point in crying over spilt milk?
Life is short and we live it only once. Every minute we spend on being unhappy is a minute of happiness we lose. When we slip and fall, would we want to spend a lot of time being upset, or would it be better to get back up, dust ourselves off and either try again or do something else?
Being happy is a conscious decision. It is a decision to snap out of a funk, look away from the bad side and retrain our eyes at the bright side. It is, really, about positive thinking, and looking at the glass half full. Most of the time, the glass isn't full.
Positive thinking is the martial art of the mind. It's about focusing your energy on useful things, on getting better and disregarding the tendency of an emotional slump. You have to train and fight to keep yourself optimistic about things.
Because happiness is your right, and as the commercial says: "You're worth it."
As for that friend of mine, she's fully recovered after countless operations and therapies, continued her studies in the US, is raising a family and the last time I checked, still makes others laugh with her hysterical sense of humour.
IRWAN ABDUL RAHMAN is the executive editor, lifestyle, entertainment and new media of The Malay Mail, in addition to being the paper's resident cartoonist. He simply hopes for more ups than downs, more happy memories than sad ones. He blogs at www.nose4news.wordpress.com, tweets @irwanargh and can be contacted at irwan@mmail.com.my.
0 comments:
Post a Comment