My golden card

I always tell myself, you can't compare your difficulties to another person's. Everyone faces different struggles in life.

Some people have more serious problems than others, but kita kena ingat that none of these goes unnoticed by God. Every hardship that you face with faith and patience will surely earn you credit in God's eyes. The bigger the hardship, the bigger the reward.

Such is life; we were all dealt with different sets of cards. But I personally believe that everyone will have at least one golden card in their deck: something to be thankful for.

Almost every night before I go to sleep, I try to count my blessings but I always don't know where to start. It's really humbling to realise that you've been blessed in so many ways that you don't know which one to give thanks for first.

The roof above my head?

The warm bed to sleep in?

My health?

My education?

My tummy that's always hungry but also always kenyang?

It's impossible to cover everything every time so my list always changes from one night to another. But the one thing that remains a constant in all of my lists, is my family.

As I grow up and meet more people in my life (and hear more stories and watch more movies), I begin to realise that having a good family is not a right – it's a privilege. You don't get to pick what kind of family you're born into. Nobody chose to be born into a bad nor a good family. A rich or a poor family. A big or a small family. It's something that's given to you.

I always find myself wondering what is it that I did, and what I will ever do, to deserve such a blessing in this department. I mean I do fight and argue with my family members and we do give each other headaches more times than we'd like, but alhamdulillah after all the bites and scratches, the flying kicks and hair-pulling, we still love each other very very much* hahaha.

(*terms and conditions apply)

I'm also very close to my cousins on both of my parents' sides. My mum's side is quite small and we've always lived close to each other, so we're very close-knit. We gather at my grandparents' place on Fridays and the neighbours always say that it sounds like Raya on Friday nights because it's so meriah. Hahaha. We don't even do anything special; it's just dinner, TV, and we talk talk talk. And shout at the kids when they cause so much ruckus after 10pm.

My dad's side, on the other hand... we're a huge family. But even then, we practically grew up together although some of us live in different states. Because I don't get to see my paternal cousins as much as I do my maternal cousins, it's always a treat when we do see them.

I always look forward to family gatherings, even if it's just over breakfast at our family's favourite nasi lemak place. Family events are a big thing for me. Really. I've cried several times for missing out on gatherings hahaha. Crybaby™.

I used to take it for granted that it's a normal thing to be very close to one's cousins, but the more stories I hear from friends, the more I realise that it's not always the case. Some people don't really talk to their cousins and some don't even know them that well. I've had people tell me that it's so nice how close I am to mine, especially considering how many of us there is. Some people even think we're siblings because we're so close. It's usually comments like these that make me realise that this is more than just a norm.

I've learnt that not everyone has a good relationship with their (extended) families, not everyone gets love and support from their families, and not everyone looks forward to family gatherings. So if you do, let's not take it for granted.

We were all dealt with different sets of cards in life. We are tested in different ways, and we are also blessed in different ways.

As humans, we tend to focus more on the negatives and overlook the positives, so let's try to shift the focus for a change.

One of the golden cards in my deck is my family... What's yours?

Mindless doodles

I can't sleep. It's past 3am and I know I should go to bed if I want to overcome this jetlag – I'm back in KL! –, but an idea popped into my head just now and I got so restless that I just refused to sleep. I needed to write it down somewhere, but unfortunately I'd left all of my nice notebooks in London! Drat. (That's one thing about me: I love love love myself a nice notebook but I always feel too 'sayang' to use it. So I end up just keeping it in a drawer until I find a worthy use for it; and by now I have a small collection of cute notebooks.)

So anyway, I feel like this idea deserves a very pretty, well-bound notebook. I thought I'd kept at least one nice notebook tucked away somewhere in the study room or my bedroom, but non. Shamefully. I really hope this idea will stay put in my mind until I find a proper notebook for it, because an A4 paper just will not do.

But I'm writing this post because my search just now was not a complete failure. During my rather ill-timed quest following an inconveniently-timed epiphany (sahur is less than 2 hours from now and I have a long journey back to my kampung in the morning), I came across my very old notebooks that I had during high school. They were all full of notes for exams, or numbered lists of my thoughts, but most of the pages contained doodles.

My friends and I used to love doodling sooo much back then. I could doodle at any time about anything. Some were snippets of conversations, some were song lyrics, some were famous quotes, and some were just random words that popped into my head. I didn't really care what it was, I just had to write. I always had a pen in my hand in school; sometimes I sit through a class just doodling what the teacher is saying.

It's interesting to read the scribbles again and be taken back to my school days. I even found some conversations that I had with my friends on paper, about basic and stupid things. Such carefree times! Just thought maybe it'd be nice to share some of my doodles here on the blog:

I hope I won't regret putting these up! Hahaha just keep in mind that whatever you see are very mindless thoughts of some 16-year-old girls and they would most probably seem very out-of-context!

I also found some heartfelt entries here and there, which made me realise how much I loved writing. I guess I was pretty good at it, too. I was easily very honest about my feelings, and reading those entries makes me feel like I was much braver back then. I wrote what I wanted to; my entries conveyed what I'd felt at the time.

I used to blog a lot more too, but I don't know, somewhere along the way something made me feel like I was being too transparent; like I was showing people how vulnerable I was. So I stopped writing for a while and deleted my blog and became more cautious about what I reveal, especially when it comes to my feelings. I think I've become quite... emotionally constipated nowadays. Hahaha.

I also find it harder to pen down my thoughts properly now which explains the lack of blogposts! (Not that anyone cares...) I swear I have so many incomplete posts which have been left hanging. Let's hope my 2009 writing mojo comes back to me soon!

Anyway, take care guys and I hope it's not too late to wish you a Ramadhan kareem xx