My Rambling Musing I

The new semester has arrived. My last semester result is not out yet, but I am not really looking forward to it as I don’t think I did excellent – won’t be too bad either, insyaAllah. Note: I am usually, fairly fatalistic, so nothing to worry about. What’s important right now is to set my priorities right and to find the right balance with my responsibilities and interests – oh yeah, I am a person with multiple interests, and the hardest thing for me is perhaps to really concentrate on one thing at a time.

It is true that it is easy to find a person who hops from one thing to another in an ad hoc manner, but it is a rarity to find someone who is really good at what he or she is doing. That is why grandmasters are envied by many and they are hard to come by – it takes a lot of hard work, rigorous training, and a lot of sweat to produce one. Having said that, I am not negating the need to master multiple skills and knowledge, what I am saying is we should not fall into the trap of ‘jack-of-all-trade-but-master-at-none’. Of course it will be terrific if we can actually be master of multiple disciplines – I hope to be one of those in the future – berangan.

Now back to reality. I need to brush up my C++ skill for this semester and not to mention: Study hard… And Smart? How smart can you get?

I don’t know why, but I find it pretty hard to memorize formulas, facts, and even people’s name nowadays – important stuff. Somehow I have the uncanny ability to memorize strange things and small details that other people tend to forget – unfortunately these memories are not so beneficial, although it can be helpful at rare times. The theory about one's spiritual state affects one's memory is an interesting one. The memory power of the people during the prophetic and pious predecessors time was extraordinary, as Mary Carruthers, author of The Book of Memory writes, "ancient and medieval people reserved their awe for memory. Their greatest geniuses they describe as people of superior memories."1 That brings the question – or rather my paranoia and self-made-up excuse – about how dyslexia affects me nowadays? I no longer write sentences in mirror images, nor do I confuse ‘p’ with ‘q’ or ‘3’ with ‘8.’ I seem perfectly normal nowadays… But I thought my vision was perfectly fine too when actually I needed a pair of glasses.

I’ve been reading studies about theories of memory but it seems that we are still playing the guessing game on how we remember and how we forget. Maybe it’s just me who fail to understand those well-written treatises on this subject. What I can say is “EP” and ”HM” are scary… I hope I can be “AJ.” How do I train a seahorse, or in other word, a hippocampus? What does it mean when you have your neuropathways hardwired in strange ways - dyslexic? They say you get creative people, but deficient in certain aspects – seems familiar. Hope there will be some fatah for me, insyaAllah. On practical solution, maybe I should learn how to use mind maps more effectively to aid me in my studies – after all I think I am a visual learner and I believe my thinking is more conceptual. Note: Change of topic for the next paragraph.

Sometimes I feel like drowning… Sometimes I feel like I am in no man’s land. The voice inside me will say, “Who cares? Well they don’t, it’s your own problem, you have to stand by your own.” Then that voice will add, “It's ok, as long as He is not mad with me.” Now this argument seems familiar. Strange how sometimes I give people advice, but truthfully I myself don’t have the strength when I am in such predicament. Nothing strange perhaps, it’s called moral support – we do that to other people even though sometimes we ourselves have no idea what the solution to the problem really is.

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.2

When one sets sail to the sea, it is important to read the stars properly, to have the right compass so that one does not get confuse with his or her direction. I hope that my compass is showing the real North Star. One should only expect that there will be thunderstorms and big tidal waves in the vast, silent seas of uncharted territories. Until then…

“I seek refuge with the glory of Your light, which the heavens and earth are lit form, Your anger will not befall on me, nor Your displeasure descends on me. To You is the supplication until You are pleased, and there is no control or power except by You.”3

Footnotes:-

1. Memory: Why We Remember, Why We Forget by Joshua Foer, National Geographic November 2007.

2. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (verses 111-119), T.S. Eliot 1917.

3. A portion of dua Taif incident by Rasulullah s.a.w. (I can't remember the specific chain of narration. Sorry for that.)