Kalau melentur buluh,
biarlah dari rebungnya.
And also the African proverb:
It takes the whole village to educate a child.
But how do we teach a virtue to somebody. I remember vaguely reading one of Idries Shah about a Sufi Master taking his murids on a journey and show them various examples of people persevering in their pursuits. The idea is for the murids to learn what perseverance means and keep the discipline in their own struggles. Listening about perseverance and seeing it in action is certaily two diffrent things.
We can’t just tell people to behave and everything will be fine and dandy after that. I believe this is so because within our own self, within this person that we call, for example sake, Fateh, there are various faculties at work. There are the egos, desires that try to go one way and the soul, the heart that wanna go the other way. Throughout human history, we could see this in the Yin/Yang, various facets of the Hindu gods, and even in the id, ego, super-ego of Freud. There’s a good introduction about this in a book called, appropriately, Book of Sufi Healing by Hakim Chisti.
In my own case, despite her temper, my grandma is one generous person. Whenever we go to visit some relatives, close or near, she will always bring a simple gift. Befitted orang kampung like her, the gift could be a few cans of condesed milk or a few kilos of sugar; and if she’s financially constrained, biscuits will do. And I hope to emulate her in that sense. If anything, charity is a good deed and could take away difficulties from us. May we do this more and more everyday. Aminnnn.
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