HUMAN DESTINY
God has unique ways of shaping man’s destiny – ways that our puny human minds sometimes find difficult to understand!
Typhoons, earthquakes and other natural disasters which man has no control over, indiscriminately kill people and unfairly destroy their lives. We grieve and mourn the losses but quickly mend the broken pieces and start afresh with renewed dreams. We heal and hope for better times ahead!
In the same way God destines greatness for some people and bottomless despair for others. Fate rewards some and punishes others sometimes unfairly to our naked eyes. Their efforts are decried and their failures redeemed in ways we ordinary humans cannot fathom!
Obama gets the Nobel prize prematurely, Isa wins Bagan Pinang with a thumping majority – victories which appear man-made and contrived! After all you can easily lobby for titles and awards these days, and you can persuade people to support you especially when you are beloved! The games that humans play, especially politicians, are intricate and intriguing! Always, they are inspired by the belief that they are doing it for the people they are destined to lead. So they connive and contrive to make things work!
But I believe God has a bigger plan up there! Giving Obama and Isa their hearts’ desire is the best way to extract from them their best efforts! Putting them in the glare of publicity and national interest is destiny’s way of getting them fully committed to the cause!
For Obama it is world peace, for Isa it is political integrity – tall orders indeed and orders to be seriously heeded!
For those of us who dream of the good old days when integrity was pure and honour uncontaminated, there is hope of a paradise regained. For the realistic and pragmatic among us who are prepared to make compromises along the way, let’s hope we are guided by the basic values inherent in your culture and religion.
I believe that honesty and integrity have a deep religious grounding and it is this that must be propelled to the forefront of national development! The rakyat need to be continuously reminded of and reeducated in basic morality!
HUMAN DESTINY! GOD’S WILL!
nini talk 
Dylan Thomas wrote this for his dying father. But perhaps the ‘father’ is a metaphor of the sentiments you express. “the good old days when integrity was pure and honour uncontaminated”. Your own father stood for that kind of purity….of body, mind and spirit. I love the fact you continue to rage, while everything else about your persona is calm and intact (including that inimitable jambul of yours !!).
DO NOT GO GENTLE INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Dylan Thomas
Simply, stunningly beautiful! One of my favourite lines of poetry:
RAGE, RAGE AGAINST THE DYING OF THE LIGHT!
Yes dear Vim – what weight we carry as daughters of fathers whose mission was to lead a simple, honest life and to be of service to society! They were blessed to be educated in that tradition by dedicated schoolmasters and mentors. You are right – teacher training is of the utmost importance!
Re my “jambul” – let it be in my epitaph that it remained upstanding when other were downtrodden!
thanks for posting!:3