Making Things Right

Some people say reflecting on a deed is more important than doing the deed itself. These past few years, I come to a realization that almost everything that I do in my life, I do them wrongly; in spite of that, my life was 'perfect'. Note: This is not some Ghazalian epiphany, it's not about the turmoil regarding my intention (I am not claiming my intentions are sound either (He knows best), it's just not that).

The best way to describe it is like a smooth-running operating system that never crashed before, thus there was an illusion of robustness about the operating system . Let's say the operating system used to run on a single-core processor platform, suddenly when the industry switched to multi-core processors, it crashed almost every minute. The programmers were baffled, they tried to patch up the operating system with quick-fix service packs, but nothing was working. Actually the programmers realized that there was something fundamentally wrong with the kernel of the operating system, and the only way to fix it was to do a major overhaul, or to just discard it and start with something totally new.

Let's cut out what was wrong with me, it's too long a story. All I can say, I think now I am on my way to make things right (insyaAllah), although I am still stumbling, I just know it. As Tiger puts it, "because when you're changing something, what you think you're doing is not always what you're actually doing." For those who don't know, Tiger Woods was dominating the PGA tour between 1999-2002, but the young superstar was crazy enough to revamp his swing and search for a new, virtually 'perfect' swing. Everyone thought he was crazy at that time, but it was perhaps a necessary change: Some claim he will not be able to keep up with his old swing as he ages, even though it was a good one (Just like the operating system?). Whatever the truth is, Tiger made his resurgence in 2005 and onwards.

Hear what Tiger has to say about his swing changes: "It's never easy taking swing changes into competition. You have to be prepared and understand that you're going to fail. And it's OK to fail. The hardest thing is picking yourself up when you get knocked down. But to make the changes, you've got to keep getting up and realize that you have to get worse to get better."

Really, Tiger?

Note: If Naruto can do it, I can also do it...

Note2: Naruto during training...

Note3: Phew... I managed to supress the 'Kyuubi' yesterday, alhamdulillah.