peace
Assalamualaikum!
After delaying it for a couple of weeks, I thought maybe it’s time to write about this (this sounds dramatic but the post i’m about to write is not 😂). And I’m currently not in a state of 100% peace of mind so I guess this would be a refresher for me as well.
So, sometime last month, there was an event held by Faith Events and Tertib Publishing about “The Secrets to a Calm and Peaceful Mind” and the talk was given by Ustaz Mizi Wahid. It was held at the university that I’m currently attending, so when I saw the announcement in my email, I thought “why not go?”. Plus, it’s been sooo long since I went to a physical event/ceramah and this seemed like a great opportunity.
I won’t go into the details of the talk because the team had done a very good job on posting snippets/key points from the talk on their instagram, which you can find here.
What I wanted to write about was that I didn’t realize I was going to be tested right after. So for brief context, I mostly rely on public transport here because I don’t have my own car yet. I ordered a Grab to go back to my hostel from my campus (oh, maybe i should’ve mentioned that the hostel and the campus of the university is separated, for some reason). Usually it’ll take less than 10 minutes between the two places. When I did manage to get a Grab, the driver called me to say he couldn’t get to me because the roads were closed. In my heart, I was like “*sighs*, of course today out of all these days”. So I cancelled the Grab request and ordered another one. This time, this driver was able to get to me. But when we arrived at a traffic light junction, we saw smoke coming up from a building and fire engines were around (was just checking for some news about it but there wasn’t much? hopefully no one was injured).
The usual roads leading to my hostel were also closed and so we had to reroute. The Grab driver was apparently not familiar with the area and asked me where to go. I was (and still am, to be honest) not too familiar with the area too, so I was scrambling on Google Maps to find alternative routes. Meanwhile, the driver was trying out a different road but had to do a U-turn because it was closed too. Just to give you a idea on how it got stressful, the roads were pretty packed so moving around, making U-turns were not easiest. Plus, the driver that I got was getting a bit aggressive, raising his voice and I started to feel uncomfortable (and feel bad because I wish I knew the area more so I could get us out of this situation).
He ended up asking me to change my destination, so I changed it to a bank, not necessarily nearby, but far enough for us to get out of the packed roads. We managed to get to the bank and I got off the Grab. In regards to the cost, it usually costs less than RM10 from campus to the hostel, but this ‘journey‘ from campus to this particular bank costed me more than that. When he left, I had to again order another Grab, which did cost me another RM10+. During that time, I was thinking of just getting back to my hostel because I was unfamiliar with where I was and I was planning to go to my sister’s place right after the event (but alhamdulillah, definitely was grateful for at least being able to afford paying for Grab). This time, I finally managed to arrive at my hostel. The driver was much more chill than the previous one 😂. Right after reaching my hostel, I quickly went to my room, prayed my Asar and immediately went out again to go to my sister’s.
When I was in the car with the first driver, I tried my best to not be too emotional about it, wishing how this shouldn’t have happened, why did I get an loud-spoken driver (he was getting angry about this and as a person who doesn’t like conflicts, I really wanted to squeeze myself in the corner) etc. And because I just attended that talk about ‘having peace’, I tried to stay calm and remind myself of the points that were shared during the talk (respond with peace, have tawakkul/surrender to Allah, make du’a !!). And regarding the cost, I was quite sad that I had to spend more than double what I usually pay for Grab but I consoled myself that maybe that money wasn’t meant to be mine anyway and Allah Ar-Razzaq will always, always provide for you.
Fast forward to a couple of days later, a friend/senior of mine was unexpectedly doing a quiz. It was a question asking about what was Allah’s first command to Nabi Adam a.s. I saw it, albeit a couple hours later when she posted it, and gave her an answer (two, actually, because I wasn’t sure). Later that day, turned out, I was correct (the second answer that i gave was the correct one)! And the first one to answer correctly! Hehe. She gave a little gift of money for answering correctly and to my surprise, the amount covered most of what I spent taking the Grab the other day. I was honestly soooo dumbstruck and heart warmed and grateful at the same time 😭. Allah replaced the money that I ‘had to‘ spend, going through that whole ordeal. Indeed, indeed Allah is Ar-Razzaq (The Provider) and having (and working towards having!) peace are important.
This month hasn’t been as peaceful as I wanted to be so this little story has been a good reminder first and foremost to myself to keep trying to be peaceful and especially surrendering and trusting Allah. It gets hard to remind yourself of all the good reminders when you’re going through tough times but I try my best to acknowledge the reminders when I come across them.
That ended up pretty long. I usually don’t have many stories to tell and turns out having to write the details out, makes it very lengthy, although in retrospect it’s quite a short story. It was interesting to recall the incident, I thought I’ve completely forgotten about it. That’s all for noww. Thank you for sticking around 😊
Wassalam ❤
p/s new hippo content! a live performance plus interview 🙂 the quality of this video is just soo goodd i can’t stop watching itt. they’ve done a couple of performances at the current, dating back to 2014, and it’s cool to see how they’ve grown 🙃