My Journey
Because each step of life is always worthwhile…Archive for Life
Get Your Kick-Off!
Like a football match that requires a player to make a kick-off to start the game, life often invites people to make a new start. It could be the start of anything, such as the start of living in a new environment or the start of a new semester in a college-life. Sometimes the starting line is something one has been waiting for, but at other times it might be just something inevitable. No matter what lies behind the starting line, everyone has a road to travel ahead, and the preparation one makes for it can determine his failure or success on traveling life’s road.
On traveling life’s road, one may choose to be an awake or a sleepwalker. A writer, Tom Morris, notes that there are too many people wander through life like a sleepwalker and following routines each day without knowing where they are going. People need to be careful if they do not know where they are going because they might unconsciously get themselves into dangers. To avoid that, a clear goal needs to be set in the very first place. One might need some time to contemplate and figure out his goal before start walking. Such a time wouldn’t be a time wasted since it will help to make sure that each step of one is a step closer to the finish line instead of just a step of vain that will get him nowhere.
The next thing to do once one has set out a goal is to figure out a strategy for it. In order to win a football match, each player has to work on a strategy made by an expert, the coach. The same rule also applies outside of the field. To get to the destination one wishes to reach, one could ask for a map from somebody who has already traveled the same road. A college freshman may ask some necessay informations from his academic advisor, seniors, or any other sources as long as they are reliable. With the map on one’s hand, he could reach the destination faster than anyone else. Those who don’t bother to follow the map might have to get lost for some time before reaching the finish line, but the guy with the map on his hand would have better chance to make it smoothly.
The journey would not end by the time you’ve got the map. In fact, it’s not even begun until you step your feet on the road. Along the way, you would need more than just focusing on the goal and the map on your hand, but you would also need a companion by your side. People might not know when they will need the help of others, like you never know when you would want to skip a class and need somebody to sign the absent-sheet for you. Lol…I would not recommend you to do that, but surely there will be a lot of moments you would need the help of a friend. Thus, you better make sure you’re not traveling the road on your own.
Once you have reached the finish line, you can stop-by for a while and celebrate. You can have some foods and music to celebrate with your friends or family, anything fun and positive to mark the moment you’ve got your vision comes true. It is a moment you might not get unless you do the kick-off carefully. So set your goal, follow the strategy, work it out with your teammates, and get your kick-off!
HOW TO COPE WITH CANCER PATIENTS
When my mother began to vomit over and over, kept losing her appetite, and even when I realized that she had a dramatic weight loss, I never expected her to suffer from cancer. As far as I and my family knew, she had never had any serious illness before. Unfortunately, this time has to be an exception. Despite of her unblemished medical record, it did happen to her for real that she was suffered from a heart cancer. Nobody would expect that to happen to anyone, but as a matter of fact it could happen unexpectedly to anybody. Many times the people around the victim are as shocked and unprepared to deal with it, that they cannot give their best support when their beloved one needed them the most. When cancer attacks the people we know, we should be ready to help them to fight and to give out all of our amulets to win the battle against it.
Just like in any other battle, if we want to win the battle against cancer, we need to win the psychological combat at first, before we move into the physical combat. As no one would ever hope anything bad to be happened to himself, knowing the fact of having cancer for the first time would mostly become a hard time. I remember how my mother used to have nightmares of meeting family relatives who had already passed away, early after she knew that she had cancer. It seemed that she always carried her fear, worry, and hopelessness for the cancer risk even to her sleep. In that such an emotionally draining time, moral support is needed the most. We should help them to develop positive thinking, which can be done through many kinds of way. We can use religious approach to build up their confidence or encourage them to take medication and tell them how medical treatment has much developed so that to recover from cancer is no more impossible.
After dealing with the psychological problem, we should help them to be physically prepared before sending them right into the battlefield. In this case, we should help them to maintain their physical endurance by making sure that they get enough nutrition for their body. We should serve them with foods which contain many kinds of nutrition needed by their body, from carbohydrate, protein, to many kinds of vitamin. However, the problem often occurs here is that cancer victims often have problem with vomiting. Therefore, besides of giving the regular foods, we can also add healthy juices of fruits or green bean on their menu. When their digestion refuses to accept the hard foods, they would at least have these healthy liquids to keep their body strong.
With enough mental and physical provisions, one last thing they need before winning the battle is the medication support. This is the stage where they have to meet the medical treatment. On this final stage, radiation, surgery, or chemotherapy is needed to beat the cancer. Therefore, we need to support them to take the best medication possible. It would mostly take a high cost of money, so that we need to be financially prepared for it. However, no matter how much money it takes, it would always be worth-taking, since a life worth much more than materials. During this most determining stage, our assistance would also become very important. While their hands are not free from infusions, they need us to be their hands, to take care of their needs until they have recovered.
Cancer is not an easy disease to cope with. Therefore, when there is somebody around us suffers from it, the battle against the disease would not only be his, but ours. We should show our love by giving mental, physical, and medication supports they need to defeat the cancer disease.
The Blessings In Disguise
How a big heart can make the weak triumph over the hard life…
June 15, 2008, I was in a hurry to catch a train which served the passage from Central Java to Jakarta, Indonesia. It was at 6 in the evening when I reached the railway station. There was still two extra hours before the train left, but apparently there was not any seat left for me that night. I would have to attend a short-semester class right in the next morning that I had no other choices but to take a ticket for no seat. I took out a sheet of Rp 100.000,- from my purse with a sigh and gave it to the teller whose face expressed sympathy for me.
I felt pity for myself too. Many people say that life isn’t so kind in a place like that. To travel alone in such distant journey was scary enough, yet I still had to go through that in a crowded train which with the ticket I got could only give me little space to stand or to sit on the newspaper mat I could make for myself on the train’s floor. To have such travel for seven or eight hours would be so unbearable, yet I could meet with such a big-hearted woman who chose to pass a free seat to give to me.
After waited for about one and a half hour, I decided to enter any of the train wagons. Any train wagon would be fine for a no seat-passenger like me, but I still tried to find the best spot I could possibly find though. My eyes kept searching for that spot while I kept on walking from one wagon to another. I stopped when I reached the fifth wagon where I met a mother with a two-year-old baby with some space in front of their seat. I tried to ask permission from that woman with the most polite intonation I could. “Excuse me, Ma’am, I could not get any seat since I’m running out of the regular train ticket and now I’m looking for some free space for myself. So…is it okay if I am here?”
Still busy of caressing her baby, she replied. “Sure. I actually cannot get any seat either, so we can share this space. Sure, you may!”
I was quite surprised. On one side I felt sorry for her when I knew that the seat was not belong to her while she was with a baby, but on the other side I felt a bit lighter to meet a fellow sufferer who was willing to share with me. We sat on the free seats behind us meanwhile the owners had not come, but soon as a well-dressed woman came and approached us, we knew if it was the time for us to leave those seats immediately.
The mother then asked permission from that lady to use the free space in front of her seat, but instead of saying a ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ that good-looking lady just threw a brief smile which for me it even looked more closely to a smirk rather than a smile. It was looked as if that woman looked down on the mother, which probably happened because of the mother’s poor appearance. We still took that lady’s expression as a ‘Yes’ answer though.
I bought a newspaper as a mat for us to seat on that little space we got and then we had some conversation. “Where do you want to go, Ma’am?” I asked.
“To Senen Market…” she replied.
“Do you often go there?”
“Yes, I use to go there and back here regularly and I’m in a hurry tonight since I have to arrive there tomorrow, early in the morning. Thus, I have no choice but to take ticket for no seat.”
Senen Market is quite a well-known place in Jakarta for selling many kinds of second-hand goods from electronics to clothes and shoes. I assumed if that mother used to go there to pick up some goods to sell in her hometown.
When the train officer came to check our tickets and saw that there was still one empty seat, then he told us that one of us may sit there as long as no other people remarked that as his or her seat. Having been taught by my mother to favor the needy and realizing that she had to take care of her baby too, I tried to press my own ego. I offered than woman to take the seat.
“You can sit there, Ma’am.”
“No. You…sit there!”
“No, Ma’am. Thanks! But you’re with a baby, so it’s better for you to sit there.”
“Aah…it’s alright. I feel better to stay here. Really!” she said.
Deep down inside, I knew that the soft seat must be better than the hard train floor she chose, but since she kept refusing, so I decided to take the seat anyway.
From my seat, I could have a better view for it was a higher position then the previous one, on the floor. Therefore, I could see the mother and her baby more clearly. She was wearing a set of long-sleeves shirt and pants with brown and white square motif which seemed dusty. Even the white color from her shirt had turned to be nearly as brown as the original brown which colored her shirt. It was quite different to her baby’s dress, a set of nice pink clothes with a pair of cute red socks on her tiny feet. That showed me the mother’s sacrifice to always give her child the best she could give, even better than what she gave to herself.
That reminded me of her sacrifice for me too, how she passed the free seat that I could sit comfortably. Other people might see her as low class for sitting on the train’s floor, but from the eyes of humanity she even had the higher level than others who got seats. When I took the seat, I also took other’s chance to get a seat, but when that mother passed the seat, she gave another people chance to have a comfortable seat.
Along the travel, she never complained but thanked God instead. Funnily, her baby seemed to have the similar attitude with her mother. The baby did not cry a lot like most babies I knew, but slept soundly like an angel baby. It seemed that the train ground gave the baby wide enough space to have a comfortable sleep. That really amazed me of how people who seemed to be the weak could be so strong because of their big heart, which enabled them to triumph over the hard life.
