random: jom mula hidup sihat!

Pagi ni saya pergi melakukan aktiviti jalan pantas (brisk walk). Dalam lebih kurang sejam, dari pukul 7.45 pagi tadi, saya dapat berjalan lebih 6000 langkah. Pesan kawan saya dari jurusan dietetik, untuk dikira seorang yang aktif, kita perlu berjalan purata 10,000 langkah sehari. Lagi ~4000 langkah insyaAllah saya akan sambung pada waktu petang nanti. Berjalan sekitar bilik, ke tandas dan ke kafe untuk membeli makanan sahaja dah boleh litup hampir 500 langkah rasanya.

Termasuk hari ni, genap 2 minggu saya tak minum air manis (baca: bergula). Cuma air kosong dan susu. Brisk walk setiap hari ni pun termasuk inisiatif saya untuk membiasakan gaya hidup sihat. Cuma berjalan, tak penat dan tak perlukan banyak tenaga.

Dalam sehari kita sepatutnya duduk selama 10 jam sahaja secara total. 10 jam macam banyak, tapi ini termasuk duduk dalam kereta, menonton TV, menghadap komputer dan sudah tentu kebanyakan masa lain kita hanya duduk tanpa buat apa-apa. Duduk terlalu lama akan membawa banyak penyakit terutama yang berkait dengan sendi-sendi dan tulang belakang. Sekali-sekala setiap 30 minit duduk, cuba bangun dan renggangkan badan. Berjalan sekitar dalam rumah, kemudian kembalilah buat kerja di hadapan komputer.

Dalam situasi pandemik ni pula, lagilah kita akan bertambah selesa dengan rehat yang berlebihan. Makanan hari ni makin bergula dan tinggi kolesterol, gaya hidup kita pula makin pasif. Satu kombinasi yang tak seimbang. Bahkan membeli-belah yang sepatutnya membolehkan ±1000 langkah, hari ni hanya boleh dilakukan dengan hujung jari. Kurang pergerakan, kurang tenaga, tinggi risiko penyakit. Malang sekali.

Kesihatan adalah mahkota. Seorang raja yang mempunyai kekayaan seluas negeri pun tak akan bersukacita di waktu gering walau sekadar sakit tekak. Kalau dah sakit, tiada apa lagi yang kita harap selain sihat kembali. Duit berjuta-juta pun dibelanja seperti air yang mengalir. Tak kenal untung, tak kenal rugi. Yang penting sihat.

Fikir-fikirkan.

Margarita with a Straw (2014) and Cerebral Palsy

 

‘Margarita with a Straw’. It is about Laila, a girl with cerebral palsy from India that comes to New York to pursue her study. Back in India, Laila lived with her parent and little brother.

She is very passionate in music and is very talented in writing lyrics. However, she sometimes got discriminated for her disability. Because of her disability too, she struggled in her searching for a partner. After she got heartbroken of rejection, Laila relocated to New York for her undergraduate education.

In New York, Laila met a blind girl, Khanum, and started a complex relationship with her. After a long journey of self-discovery, Laila finally learned to accept herself unconditionally despite her disability and be content with everything she has in life.

[Credit]

The difficulties 

Throughout the movie, Laila faced so many difficulties because of her condition. One of them is she has to depend on her wheelchair to move everywhere she wants. There was a scene when the elevator was broken, some men workers had to lift her and her wheelchair upstairs. Plus, she can stand up only if there is someone to support her.

Laila also struggled to speak. Every time she said something, she sound slurred and almost unintelligible. Other than that, Laila also struggled to do house chores like cooking or cleaning. When she lived with her mother, her mother will do all the cooking. But when she had to live by herself, she cannot even break an egg into the pan. Lastly, she found it very hard to find love.

When she first confessed her feeling towards a guy she liked, the guy rejected her making her cry badly the moment after. Because of that, Laila started to have issue with her sexuality until she involved in bisexual relationship.

The possible causes of the communication difficulties 

The cerebral palsy that is suffered by the main character, Laila, is a brain disease that causes paralysis. It can happen due to the damage to the brain associated with muscle control. 

In this case, Laila is having difficulty mainly in her fine motor skills like writing and grasping and in some of her gross motor skills like standing up and walking straight. Most of her movements seem jerky too. Objectively looking at her physical feature, Laila has a ‘scissor gait’ where her knees and tights constantly touch which can happen due to constant flexing of adductor muscles. Other than that, despite her struggle to speak clearly, Laila’s cognition is intact. This can be seen through her ability to study at university level, write song lyrics, speak English, understand jokes and play chess.

Based on above signs, the cerebral palsy suffered by Laila can be a spastic-typed. Spastic cerebral palsy can happen due to lesion possibly at the motor cortex at the frontal lobe. This part of the brain is functioning in controlling and coordinating muscle movement by the use of upper motor neurons. The damage to the motor cortex can result in symptoms like hypertonia (increased muscle tones), muscle stiffness and eventually, difficulty to move. Hence in this case, Laila shows jerky movements and has ‘scissor gait’.

However, the damage may not affect the deep structure of the brain like basal ganglia. This is because Laila did not show any involuntary movement like stitching or trembling. Basal ganglia is functional for coordination of fine motor skills and voluntary movement. In this case, by looking at the symptoms, it can be said that the basal ganglia is not affected by the damage.

For her language skills, the only domain that is impaired is her phonology characterized by poor articulation. This is because of the same reason which is damage to the motor cortex of the brain without affecting the part of the brain that is dominant for language processing like Broca’s and Wernicke’s area. The muscle stiffness due to the damage can affect all parts of the body other than the limbs including the tongue, face and vocal cord. Because of that, Laila is very struggling to speak causing her to vocalize, produce slurred speech and hard to understand despite her good comprehension of language and cognitive performance.

Throughout the movie, there were no history of postnatal causes like head trauma or accident that have been mentioned. Considering this, the cerebral palsy that Laila has can be a neurodevelopmental disease which means that something happened to the area of the brain during its initial development or the sensitive period that cause her to be born that way. The possible aetiologies that may contribute to this damage may happen prenatally (before birth) or perinatal (during birth). Examples of prenatal aetiologies are exposure to radiation, infections such as toxoplasmosis, rubella and cytomegalovirus, and hypoxia. Hypoxia is a condition that can happen due to insufficient amount of oxygen supplied to the developing brain during pregnancy. Next, examples of perinatal aetiologies can be infection or birth asphyxia (oxygen deprivation) that may happen when something gets in the way of the baby breathing like umbilical cord coiled around the baby’s neck during delivery.

The management

As SLP, the first step I can do in managing communication difficulties of Laila is determining her main concern through a systematic and comprehensive assessment. This can be done through examination of her case history, oral cavity, audiology test, articulation assessment and more. A comprehensive assessment is important to get a big picture of patient’s communication problem and find out what are the underlying causes that can be addressed through speech and language intervention.

Next, I must plan a treatment plan tailored to patient’s specific struggle. In this case, I should focus the treatment on Laila’s articulation problem because that is the part of her speech that is prominently impaired. In my intervention, one of the therapy that I can do to help reducing Laila’s communication problem is articulation therapy. Through this therapy, I can encourage her to make specific sounds while focusing on the mouth movement to produce it by looking in the mirror. Besides, I can also help her strengthen her mouth muscle by doing exercise like blowing and breathing. This by the way, can also strengthen the abdominal and diaphragm for breath control.

However, the intervention for communication problem in people with cerebral palsy does not necessarily need to be focused on speech production. Instead, as SLP, I may also suggest Laila the use of some alternatives or to be exact, assistive devices. These include tablets, talking computer with keyboard, specialized software and more. This alternative is also called augmentative and alternative communication (AAC). Within my scope, I can help the patient to choose the right AAC system according to their needs and guide them to use it in their daily interaction with other people.

Self-reflection 

My self-reflection after watching this movie is to never take my healthy state for granted especially the ability to communicate well in daily life. Through communication, I can achieve many things such as conveying my thoughts, requesting needs and desires, express feelings and building relationship with other people.

Besides, the ability to move normally is just important as much. The ability to move our limbs like walking and reaching out to grasp something enable us to do many works easily that Laila may find it difficult to do. For examples, walking upstairs, cooking and even being qualified to many job opportunities. According to The Washington Time report (2005), in developing countries, 80% to 90% of persons with disabilities of working age are unemployed, whereas in industrialized countries the figure is between 50% and 70%.

The movie has impacted me in the way I see people with cerebral palsy. From the character Laila, I learn courage and confidence instead of recognizing her by her obvious weaknesses. For example, despite her limited movement, Laila did not give up in her studies and always showed up in public without feeling ashamed of her condition. She even pursued her study oversea and made friends with many people she met. In my situation as a student, I can apply these values to do well in my study and stop giving excuses when there are obstacles coming in my way.

I also learned that people with cerebral palsy do not like other people to mention them by their condition. For example, when Laila and her band won the singing competition, she refused to give her speech when the emcee asked her to share her struggle as a person with cerebral palsy instead of acknowledging her for the good lyrics she wrote. From this scene also, I learned to never underestimate, discriminate or even put a label on people with disabilities. In fact, the Commission on The Status of People with Disabilities report (1996) had adopted three guiding principles which are equality, maximizing participation and enabling independence and choice.

Other than that, I learned to always be helpful especially with people with disabilities and to never take my good deed for granted. When the elevator was not functioning and Laila had to depend on some men to lift her upstairs, she was very sorry to burden them. Dr Vivek Baliga (2019) in one of his articles stated that having being reminded constantly of your limitations can result in inferior feelings which is not good for someone’s mental health. As a person who is physically healthy, we should take helping people with disability as our responsibility which we do voluntarily without expecting reward from them.

The change

After getting some insights of cerebral palsy from this movie, one of the things that I would do differently, especially as an SLP, is to enhance my knowledge and to improve my clinical skills through comprehensive learning of cerebral palsy. This way, I will be able to always keep myself up to date to new information and new approach of treating people with cerebral palsy. With lots of knowledge too, I can make the best of clinical judgement that my patient can benefit from.

I would also raise awareness of cerebral palsy among local society. In this movie, Laila is shown to be less discriminated when she came to America compared to when she was living in India. This shows the awareness among people living is Western countries that encourages them to be respectful and treat people with cerebral palsy accordingly. For example, in United States, March has been celebrated as National Cerebral Palsy Month since 2006. There, they even celebrate Cerebral Palsy Awareness Day on every March 25^th by wearing green, using hashtags and donating to organizations such as Cerebral Palsy Foundation.

By advocating cerebral palsy, I will also have the opportunity to prevent the risk factors. This includes encouraging people to make regular medical check-up and getting vaccine. For example, rubella, or German measles, is preventable if women are vaccinated against the disease before becoming pregnant (NIH, 2020). Plus, acquired cerebral palsy that is caused by brain injury can be prevented by practicing safety precautions such as using car seats for infant and toddlers and seatbelts for adults.

Furthermore, as SLP, I will generate new ideas of communication alternatives so that people with cerebral can benefit from AAC with more options that suit their needs. Despite electrical or mechanical engineering is beyond my scope of profession, I can contribute to the improvement of the devices by integrating my knowledge of communication needs with the communication devices function. This is possible because the communication alternatives have been developing from a simple photobook we commonly find in speech clinics to the speech-generating devices that is specially used by Stephen Hawking.

Last but not least, I would also involve in multidisciplinary team to maximize the health care service towards my patient. This way, I can get access to many new information including those beyond my profession and make a holistic and thorough clinical judgement for the best outcomes. For example, whenever I have to deal with cerebral palsy patient, I can refer the family members or their physician to gain more understanding of their condition.

slp thingy: Pervasive Developmental Disorder - not otherwise specified (PDD-NOS)

 

PDD-NOS stands for Pervasive Developmental Disorder-Not Otherwise Specified. PDD-NOS was one of several previously separate subtypes of autism that were folded into the single diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) with the publication of the DSM-5 diagnostic manual in 2013.

In the past, psychologists and psychiatrists often used the term “pervasive developmental disorders” and “autism spectrum disorders” (ASD) interchangeably. As such, PDD-NOS became the diagnosis applied to children or adults who are on the autism spectrum but do not fully meet the criteria for another ASD such as autistic disorder (sometimes called “classic” autism) or Asperger syndrome. Like all forms of autism, PDD-NOS can occur in conjunction with a wide spectrum of intellectual ability. Its defining features are significant challenges in social and language development.

Some developmental health professionals refer to PDD-NOS as “subthreshold autism." In other words, it’s the diagnosis they use for someone who has some but not all characteristics of autism or who has relatively mild symptoms. For instance, a person may have significant autism symptoms in one core area such as social deficits, but mild or no symptoms in another core area such as restricted, repetitive behaviors. As a diagnosis, PDD-NOS remains relatively new, dating back only 15 years or so. As a result, some physicians and educators may not be familiar with the term or may use it incorrectly.

The current Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) spells out the criteria for a diagnosis of PDD-NOS. Unfortunately, this description consists of a single paragraph, which mainly asserts what it is not:

"This category should be used when there is severe and pervasive impairment in the development of reciprocal social interaction associated with impairment in either verbal or nonverbal communication skills or with the presence of stereotyped behavior, interests, and activities, but the criteria are not met for a specific Pervasive Developmental Disorder, Schizophrenia, Schizotypal Personality Disorder, or Avoidant Personality Disorder. For example, this category includes “atypical autism” – presentations that do not meet the criteria for Autistic Disorder because of late age at onset, atypical symptomatology, or subthreshold symptomatology, or all of these."

Studies are suggesting that persons with PDD-NOS can be placed in one of three very different subgroups:

A high-functioning group which is around 25 %

The symptoms largely overlap with that of Asperger syndrome, but who differ in terms of having a lag in language development and mild cognitive impairment.

A second group which is around 25% 

The symptoms more closely resemble those of autistic disorder, but do not fully meet all its diagnostic signs and symptoms.

Third group which is around 50%

They meet all the diagnostic criteria for autistic disorder, but whose stereotypical and repetitive behaviours are noticeably mild.

Treatment for PDD-NOS

There are a variety of treatments available for ASD, which includes PDD-NOS.

First is Applied behavioral analysis (ABA).  It is the gold-standard treatment approach for autism spectrum disorder. There are several different types of ABA. At its core, ABA is concerned with reinforcing positive behaviors while discouraging negative behaviors. It is also proven by research to be a very effective treatment for autism with almost 50% of young children receiving good quality intensive ABA will be able to catch up to their normal development. 

Second is speech or language therapy. This type of therapy can help with deficits in their language or communication.

Next is Occupational or physical therapy. Occupational therapy may help people with autism develop communicating and interacting skills with other people; his or her interests, activities, and play skills at home and in school. These can also help with coordination issues and also with learning day-to-day tasks such as getting dressed and bathing.

Certain medications will also help. There are no medications to treat ASD directly. However, there are medications to help treat other conditions such as anxiety and depression that often occur along with ASD.

Other than that cognitive behavioral therapy. It is a talking therapy that can help people to manage their problems by changing the way they think and behave. It is recommended that CBT could be used for the treatment of those disorders in children on the autism spectrum, as this is in line with existing National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidance for coexisting mental health disorders such as depression even though there is insufficient evidence to determine that. 

There are also multiple option of alternative or complementary therapies such as music therapy, massage therapy, and herbal medicine. However, these alternatives might lack of research that proves them to be effective in some ways. Some may even come with significant risk, so it is important to speak with a doctor before starting one.

Bajrangi Bhaijaan: The Psychology of Munni

Bajrangi Bhaijaan is an action movie which narrates a story of an Indian man, Pawan figuring all the way out to unite a lost Pakistani girl named Shahida (Munni) with her lost parent. This movie does not involve only interpersonal conflicts between Pawan and Munni but also resolves family issues, religious difference and conflict among neighbouring countries.

From this movie, we can learn various types of personalities and stages of human development through many characters. In this article, we are going to discuss the development of Munni as a preschool child physically, mentally and socially and how the factor of religion and culture affects her. We are also going to explain Bajrangi’s actions based on Kohlberg’s Theory of Moral Development.

Observation on Munni’s development

Munni is a girl aged six years old which is a preschool. She is muted and lives with her family in District Sultanpur, a green mountain range with small villages, ravines and streams. The people there actively shepherd sheep and harvest plants. Indirectly, Munni grows as an animal lover.

Munni grows in a very good environment and family of Muslim Pakistani where the family members used to wear scarf and fully covered clothes. She even raised her hand when she saw her mother praying. The community in the place she lives in has a very close relationship. It is illustrated in the early part of the movie the villagers gather to watch a televised cricket match between India and Pakistan. Munni by the way is a friendly and an easy-going child who can easily socialize with strangers like Pawan. One time when she was at the immigration office, she smiled and waved at the guard.

Munni was separated from her mother on their journey back home from Delhi after meeting a saint to restore her speech. She jumped off the train to save a lamb just when the train drove off before she can re-board it. She was running after the train and trying to make herself noticed by waving hands but the train was just too fast to catch. Brilliantly, Munni decided to board a freight train as if the train would bring her to the same direction her mother headed. Unfortunately, it went opposite and winded Munni to Kurukshetra, Haryana where she met Pawan.

In their journey of searching Munni’s lost parent, Munni has portrayed so many responses that indicate her level of cognition and socio-emotion. For example, Munni once tried to steal the bangles but obediently cancelled her intention when Pawan told her not to. When Pawan decided to hand her to a travel agent, Munni acted clingy and refused to be left. In every situation when Pawan was naively speaking the truth, Munni would do a facepalm to show disapproval. Other than that, Munni also cunningly tricked the inspector by putting a banana in his car exhaust.

Munni was also able to recognize a picture at a calendar which similar to her home. However, Munni was illiterate that it turned to be a picture of a place in New Zealand. At other time, Munni also recognized her mother in the background of a footage Chand Nawab had posted to go viral on YouTube. With the assistance from the bus driver, Munni finally managed to tell Pawan and Chand Nawab her hometown’s name after several guesses. At the end of the story, Munni was so excited to reunite with her mother but still did not forget of Pawan who had helped her through so many obstacles. On Pawan’s way of crossing the border, Munni, with all strength, had shouted out “Pawan” out loud and restore her speech in miracle.

Analysis of Munni’s development

Observation	Types of development	Description
Munni loves animals	Socio-emotional development	Start modelling appropriate behaviour and have good understanding of how to interact with other people outside the home
Munni raised her hand when her mother was praying	Socio-emotional development
Munni smiled and waved at the guard	Socio-emotional development
Munni ran after the train while waving her hand	Motor development, Cognitive development	Develop in gross motor skills
Munni boarded the freight train to catch up her first train	Cognitive development	Children tend to demonstrate conservation which refers to an awareness that altering an object’s appearance does not change its property
Munni tried to steal bangle but cancelled her intention after being forbidden	Socio-emotional development	During early childhood, a child begins to develop moral understanding regarding standards of right and wrong
Munni was clingy when Pawan was about to leave her with stranger	Socio-emotional development	Children tend to have rapid mood swings and heavily influenced by parent’s response
Munni did facepalm whenever she disagreed with Pawan’s honesty	Cognitive development, Socio-emotional development	Better understanding of emotions helps children to develop a more advanced understanding of others
Munni tricked the inspector with a banana in his car exhaust	Cognitive development	Learning arise from social interaction with knowledgeable person/adults
Munni could recognized pictures and people	Cognitive development	Able to picture, remember, understand and replicate objects in their minds and can create mental image of objects and store them for later use
Munni remembered names of places	Cognitive development	Young children can remember a great deal of information if given appropriate cues and prompts

slp thingy: Dementia

One of the acquired language disorders is dementia. Dementia, as referred by Owen, Cummings and Benson, is a kind of disorder that is characterized by intellectual decline due to chronic neurogenic causes that can affect several aspects of mental activities including language, memory, cognition and the processing of visual-spatial information. According to Diagnostic and Statistical Manual 5 (DSM-V), it is stated, “Dementia is the development of multiple cognitive deficits that include memory impairment and at least one of the following: aphasia, apraxia, agnosia or a disturbance in executive functioning”. Since 1990s, developing countries were expected to have higher rate of dementia like in China who had seen a doubling in the prevalence of Alzheimer disease alongside its rapid development (Mathers & Leonardi, 2000). In general population, Alzheimer disease has become among six leading causes of death in United States and it is also projected that by 2050, 1.6 million of 43% of older adults’ death will be due to Alzheimer disease. Plus, Owen also stated that Alzheimer’s disease accounts for over 50% of the dementia cases and may affect 20 million people worldwide.

 

Etiologies

             The most common etiologies of dementia include progressive disease and terminal illnesses. These etiologies can be divided into cortical, subcortical and mixed categories. The division is made based on the areas of the brain that they affect the most. For cortical dementias, they are created generally by the degeneration of the cerebral cortex. On the other hand, subcortical dementias are created by the degeneration of subcortical structures while the mixed dementias result from pathologic changes to the cortex and subcortex.

 

Characteristics of dementia

People with dementia may be observed by the progress of their functional skills that range from low to rapid decline as dementia is characterized by the progressive decline of the mental activities. Dementia can be progressing from mild to moderate and severe deficits.

Individuals with mild dementia may depict forgetfulness even in basic information like their identity and in common routines like eating, dressing and basic hygiene. They also suffer memory problems as they tend to misplace items, miss appointments or forget familiar phone numbers. For speech and language, at this stage, people with dementia are usually lacked of vocabularies making them less likely to perform in verbose conversation and to have problem in naming and word retrieval which so called anomia. Despite of difficulty in remembering information, their language comprehension, pragmatics and social skills are well preserved. Plus, they have intact motor function allowing them to walk, eat and use the bathroom like other people do.

The next stage is moderate dementia. People with this level of dementia exhibit poor attention and are increasingly disoriented in time and place. They often forget the current time and get lost in a familiar environment such as home. Other than having poor memory, people at this stage of dementia do experience language difficulties in word-finding and repetition due to reduced vocabularies. They also have problem in abstract thinking that they hardly understand metaphors, sarcasms and humour. However, at this stage, their motor skills are still adequate for walking and eating, although restlessness is likely.

The final stage is severe dementia. At this stage, the language skills are profoundly compromised. There will be frequent repetitions and jargon and limited meaningful communication. In fact, their comprehension skills are severely impaired.

 

Characteristics of Alzheimer’s disease

Apart of all etiologies, Alzheimer disease is the most common one that leads to dementia. It often results in dementia that the symptoms of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease are almost the same. The cause of Alzheimer’s disease is unknown but may be combination of genetic and environmental factors where nerve fibers degenerate resulting in brain atrophy that may decrease brain weight as much as 20 percent (Kemper, 1984; Koo & Price). The most obvious changes that accompany Alzheimer’s disease are memory problem where long-term memory is intact initially but deteriorates by time as the disease progresses. Meanwhile, Alzheimer’s disease affects the speech and language according to level severity.

            During the initial stage, the difficulties involve word-retrieval, off-topic conversations and comprehension. Later, they will start to develop paraphasia especially in semantic aspect of language. For example, they tend to use the incorrect word to refer to something that has related characteristic with something else like using “sudu” (spoon) to refer to “garfu” (fork).

Next, during the middle stage, people with Alzheimer’s disease may exhibit reduced repetition span, speech sound and intelligibility, and the ability of reading and writing. Due to language comprehension problem, they tend to produce empty speech with grammatical simplification. In addition, they also show phonological aphasia in which they substitute a word with nonword that preserves at least half of the segments or syllables of intended word. In final stage, their language and speech is characterized by severe naming and syntactic errors, jargon, echolalia, logoclonia, palilalia and dysarthria.

 

Reference

1. M., M., S., A., M., & D. (2018). Dementia, Alzheimer’s Disease, and Mortality after Hemodialysis Initiation. Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, 13, 1341-1347.

2. M.H. Manasco (2014) Introduction to Neurogenic Communication Disorders (1^st Ed.). Jones & Barlett Learning.

3. Owens, R.E., Mertz, D.E, Haas,A. (2003). Introduction to Communication Disorders: A Lifespan Perspective (2^nd ed. ). Boston: Pearson, Allyn and Bacon.

4. Laura M.J, Erin E. Redle (2006). Communication Sciences And Disorders: A Clinical Evidence-Based Approach ( 3^rd Ed.) Boston: Pearson.

 

kisah seorang lelaki bertemu raja

Bismillah.

Aku nak kongsi satu kisah yang aku dapat dari vlog Aida Azlin. Ada seorang lelaki yang sederhana. Dia teringin nak berjumpa dengan raja untuk mengucapkan terima kasih atas semua yang baginda dah buat untuk rakyat. Lelaki tu terasa perlu bawakan sesuatu sebagai buah tangan. Tapi apalah yang seorang raja perlukan? Memikirkan mereka tinggal di padang pasir, akhirnya dia buat keputusan untuk menghadiahkan raja sebekas besar air yang dikendong atas belakangnya. Tiba di istana, raja perkenan lelaki itu dibawa masuk. Lelaki tadi menghadap raja dengan senyuman lebar. Dia memuji dan mendoakan raja macam-macam. Dia mengatakan penghargaannya terhadap kebaikan raja. Kemudian baginda perasan bekas yang dikendong lelaki itu. Lelaki tu pun menjelaskan yang bekas itu diisi air sebagai tanda penghargaannya. Raja tadi tersentuh dengan budi pekerti lelaki tu dan memerintahkan supaya dipindahkan air itu ke bekas lain dan diisi bekas itu dengan harta sehingga penuh. Lelaki tadi sangat gembira dengan pemberian yang tak dijangka tu

Lelaki dengan raja tadi ibarat kita dengan Allah. Allah itu memiliki segalanya, kekayaan dan kekuasan Dia tu sedikit pun tak terjejas tanpa pengabdian kita. Malah kalau kita mengabdikan diri sepenuhnya kepada Allah pun, kita tidak memberi manfaat apa-apa kecuali kepada diri kita sendiri. Ada masa-masa kita rasa kita tak layak atau tak mempunyai secukupnya untuk menghadap Allah, untuk mula solat, untuk bertaubat, untuk mengatakan syukur. Kita tak sedar Allah itu tak hendakkan apa-apa untuk kita mendatangi Dia. Dan setelah kita mendatangi Dia, kita takkan sesekali 'pulang' dengan tangan kosong. Malah mendapat manfaat yang jauh lebih berlipat kali berganda daripada yang kita jangka. Jika kita mendatangi Allah dengan berjalan, Allah akan datang pada kita berlari.

random thought: i dont want anybody to get hurt

do you ever sympathize the people that might be destined to go to hell that you wish everyone will eventually outgrow whatever evil they are doing in this life. i do hope, sometimes, bad people to get the most torturing punishment. but then, the feeling is temporary. i always think no one deserve to be punished in hell for it is the worst place with the worst torture we can never imagine. no one could even bear. is it possible for everyone to get to learn their lesson before it's too late? i don't want anybody to get hurt.