remember

Money issue hadn't resolved yet.

According to him, it's not so much about the amount of money (because, during the conversation, I told him: Eh, I thought you don't mind about your moolah), what bug him the most are

- why me? The same thing over and over again!

- I'm so nice to other people, I don't deserve this

- he is a friend that I've known for so long, I trusted him

- what's wrong with me, even your parents are against me (I'm sure you know how sometimes when you feel the world is out to get you, you start to list all the bad things that are going on in your life)

I knew he just wanted to talk and he didn't need a lecture from me so I lent him my ears. After he calmed down, we hung up. I, then, typed a super long SMS, to remind both him and I, and I hope it would remind some of you as well.

Challenges come in many forms and one thing we can do to face them is by staying positive and patient about it.

Lets admit it, in our lifetime, we have committed many sins, intentionally or not. So, why don't we treat the unfortunate things that come in our ways as punishments or challenges from God.

1) As a punishment.

I know sometimes, we question, "Why me? I'm better than him, but why doesn't he get punished?"

Dear, how would you know he doesn't have his own sets of problems? He might be like you as well, who keeps everything inside because we refuse to let others see our weaknesses.

Be glad that God chooses to punish you now. God makes life difficult now because he wants to ease our lives afterwards. Have faith in God is fair, and those who have not yet received their punishments, theirs are waiting in Hell. If you were to have the options, wouldn't you rather be sentenced this way than be burnt?

So, don't think that being kind is not worth it. It always is.

And if you are really sincere in the things that you do, you shouldn't expect any kinds of rewards from anybody, even from God.

2) As a challenge.

I think we all know the same old, same old reasonings behind this. We have to face the challenge because God wants to know whether we would still love Him even when we are at difficult times in our lives. Be patient and by having the experience of overcoming challenges in our lives, we will become better people, the experiences will aid us in manouvering our lives in the future bla bla bla, I think I wouldn't bore you guys by elaborating more in this topic.

The core is: The better a person is, the more challenges he get. Tengok Firaun yang kejam tu, tak pernah sakit pun...

3) I also told him the stories I read in keretamayat.com under the title Apa itu tasauf? (Part 2):

One part of the post is about a man who had a worker. When the worker decided to quit, he didn't take his last pay. The man used the money to invest in a business and the business boomed. One day, the worker came to him to claim his salary, so the man gave the money and all the profits from the business and the worker left him with nothing. The man remained redha with the situation and because of that, God helped him when he was stuck in a cave with two other men.

Redha (acceptance).

4) Sometimes, we forget that as unfortunate as we think we are, there are other people who are way more unfortunate than us. But they don't whine about it, so why should us?

Let me tell you a true story about me.

In college and university, I had failed several papers. Early on (when I first got the results), I felt stupid and I kept telling myself that I didn't deserve that because I always attended classes unlike some of my classmates who skipped classes but still passed. After a while, I began to accept it and as the day of repeat exam was approaching, a friend and I (who had to repeat the exam as well) decided to practice for the exam together.

Just by watching her, you'd know she worked hard, you could see the amount of written notes she had (unlike me, I prefer to read what's available and do nothing extra- No wonder I was not an excellent student, haha). During that session, I told her that sometimes I felt like quitting the course because I wasn't prepared with the amount of work we had to do, nobody told me what to expect before entering the programme. (Actually, there were people who told me about it but they never sat me down and told me seriously into my eyes. Perhaps, they didn't want to dampen my spirits) She, on the other hands, said she never felt like quitting because that was her interest and she was still interested in becoming a and she kept telling herself that nobody would care about our results once we enter the professional world.

So, on the day of the exam, a handful of us sat for the exams. We, much or less received our results on the same day (not the marks, but we knew whether we passed or failed) and I passed but she did not.

I quickly left the waiting area together with the few other guys who passed the exam because we wanted to give some privacy to those who didn't to talk personally to the examniers. As I was walking with another candidate, he said something like, "Poor Jennifer, she looked like she studied hard for the paper..."

I cannot imagine being in her shoes.

On a happy note, during those occasional repeat exams I had sat, I even managed to get the highest mark a repeat exam could get. (We were not allowed to get Honours on repeat exams). To soothe my heart, I told myself that if it was not a repeat exam, I would have scored and beat others. Too bad I screwed up the first one. And mind you, it's not easy to study for repeat exams because the exams are usually not isolated from the usual papers we had to take every semester. So, instead of studying for, lets say, 4 papers, we had to study 5 papers or 6 papers (depending on how many subjects you had failed previously)

5) Sometimes, we just cannot control everything in our life. No matter how organized we are, no matter how much effort we have put in the planning, sometimes we just can't make things go as we like, because the world does not only revolve around us, it depends on other external factors too, external factors that we cannot control.

Therefore, if sometimes we feel like we had done everything correctly, we had done our best, but things still fail to go accordingly, we just have to tell ourselves that: Things happen.

And 'Things happen for a reason.'

Don't dwell ourselves too much into our problems. Look forward, let the past be the teacher, and live in the present. Hold your head high but keep your feet on the ground. Aim for the stars, if the stars are out of reach, at least you'd land yourself on the moon.

And for that, my boyfriend thanked me and issues are finally let go.