A teacher who is close to his students' hearts

 

It is normal to hear of students who visit their former teachers after they have long left school. It is quite rare to hear of the reverse - teachers who make the effort to visit their former students. My former secondary school teacher at MRSM Kuantan is one such rare breed.

Cikgu Zamri Mohamed Isa taught me Chemistry when I was in Form Four. When our Pioneer batch held their annual reunion in Johor Bahru three years ago, I volunteered to help by picking up Cikgu Zamri and his wife when they arrived at Senai Airport. Last Saturday morning, I received a call from him saying that he is in Kluang at his daughter's house and was wondering if I was at home in Johor Bahru. Of course, I was honoured that he would like to come over and visit. I shared the location of my house and a few hours later, Cikgu Zamri and his family arrived at our humble abode in Kampung Melayu Majidee.

A convenient coincidence in that my better half had cooked Laksa Johor that very morning, which made it a special serving for our guests from Kuantan.

Cikgu Zamri is well-liked by hundreds of his former students from his teaching career spanning three decades at a number of MRSMs. The oft-spoken trait of his, as mentioned by many former students is his remarkable memory of the full name of his students.

Mothers and daughters-in-law

 

Three generations of ladies in our family

Four mothers and three daughters-in-law in the same pic. A rare photo indeed. Only possible because international borders have re-opened and Aidilfitri celebrations can return back to normal. This photograph would have been perfect if our three granddaughters were in it. It would then show 4 generations of ladies in our family. But the eldest granddaughter was in a reticent mood while the twins were already asleep.

Praise be to The Almighty... "Which then of the bounties of your Lord will you deny?"

The twins first time visit to their father's hometown

Our 2nd son and his family came down to JB for a visit. So we took the opportunity to do some raya shopping for the twins. Sogo department store at Mid Valley Southkey was the destination.

Both girls were still recovering from slight flu and it was quite a challenge to cater to their occasional grumpy mood. When all the coaxing and cajoling do not seem to work, this grandfather suggests that we all take a drive and explore the various places in Johor Bahru that they have not been to before. Apparently, the smooth ride and cool interior of Tok Abah's car were quite relaxing and put them at ease.

Humaira (the elder twin) holding the hand of her mother and grandmother.
Haura is in her father's arms hidden in the back

When I grow up, I want to be an engineer

If I were to look back to the days when I was in primary school, I do not think the profession of engineer had been in any of my answers when the teacher announces to the class, the oft-asked question, 'What do you want to be when you grow up?' If I recall correctly, my frequent reply was being a detective or police officer, obviously being influenced by the many mystery books that I had read and the detective shows on TV.

When I was in secondary school, my ambitions changed a bit. Although being an investigator was still in the picture, the top choice was to be a journalist. Being offered a scholarship to study at university changed all that.

This time last week, I had the wonderful opportunity to have lunch with two of my friends from a long, long time ago. They are my friends from different times of my growing-up years but their paths crossed, and now they have become mutual friends. Both are lecturers of engineering at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, here in Skudai, Johor Bahru. Although in reality, neither handle classes that much anymore as they are retiring pretty soon. Prof Noordin (on the left in the pic) is a Mechanical Engineer, while Prof Shahrin (on the right) is a Civil & Structural Engineer.

Noordin was my classmate in primary school while Shahrin was my classmate in secondary school. In all probability, Noordin or Shahrin may not have answered 'engineer' as their ambition of choice those many years ago.

Three senior engineers meet up for lunch

Heart and Mind

For someone who claims that he is retired, I somehow find myself being busy since the start of the new year. Which is a good thing, I guess.

To keep this blog ticking its slow and steady existence, I'm copying an article I received from former blogger friend Ahan via email, way back in December 2008. I'm trying to do some spring cleaning to my email storage, that's how I came across this interesting article. (Note : The former in the earlier sentence refer to the blogging part, i.e. Ahan no longer blogs, I think. But she is still my friend.)

How to make your heart and your mind work together

The same voice in your mind that told you to act is the same voice that ridicules you later for making that choice.

Am I the only one that thinks this is ridiculous?

I want to show you how I’ve learned to make my heart and mind get along.

Because unfortunately…

It’s typical in our society to feel a conflict between what we want to do (our heart) and what we feel is practical (our mind).

We end up living 1/3 of our lives in a cubicle for the “benefits.” We stay friends with people we only kind of like. We do and say things to fit in and seem cool that really go against what we feel is right in our hearts. Because it’s caused so much heartache in my life, I’ve spent a lot of time trying to diagnose the source of this problem.

Is my heart at fault? Are my feelings just silly and frivolous? Or maybe it’s my mind that’s to blame. It seems like it’s always coming up with conflicting messages anyway.

And on it goes and we never really seem to get to it. There’s a lot of social conditioning that covers up and obscures things too. Even if you really feel like that’s the right choice, how do you know for sure? How do you know it’s not just what you think you should do?

All of this might sound a little over the top, but it’s a real problem. It ruins lives because people can’t make up their minds about whether or not the path of their heart is valid or not. They end up living a shadow of the possibility that they could. All because they couldn’t make up their mind.

There’s a simple answer to this problem. It might seem even a little too simple. But most things are. Bruce Lee once said, “The height of cultivation always runs to simplicity.” I believe this.

First… let’s take a look at where this problem starts.

Confusing the purpose of the heart and mind

The main reason we suffer from this illness of indecision is that we’ve mistaken the purpose of heart and mind. The heart is like a compass, its purpose is to guide the direction our lives should take. Our heart takes a birds-eye view of our life and says “this is where you’re at and this is the direction you need to go.”

Our mind on the other hand isn’t made for making purpose-driven decisions. The nature of the mind is that it conceptualizes, organizes and compares information. It does this as best it can and says “here are the facts, here are both sides of the story.”

If we compare our mind and heart to a courtroom, our mind would be the defendant and the plaintiff (both stories) and our heart would be justice or the judge (the right direction).

The reason we’re so troubled by this conflict of head vs heart is that the mind is not only playing the prosecutor and the defence, but has taken over the role of the judge as well.

The mind should never be the judge. The mind's job is to compare and contrast. To sort things out and say “this is what I’ve got, do what you want with it.”

But more often than not, our mind isn’t doing that. Our mind is making our choices. What’s worse, is even when we don’t need our mind to be at work, it’s still going. Comparing and contrasting everything. Brooding, mostly.

Have you ever noticed that even when it’s completely unnecessary to think about anything, your mind is still going? Have noticed that when this is happening, your mind is getting in the way of your experience? Just a few examples of this that come to mind for me are; sex, watching a sunset or taking a shower. My mind really doesn’t need to be thinking while doing these things.

There’s no point. At all.

Taming the mind

Before we can get the mind to take a break when we don’t need to be incessantly thinking, we have to make friends with it first. If we try to tell our mind to go away, or that we don’t need it, we’ll just encourage it all the more. Instead of a retreat, we’ll get a resurgence. We don’t want that. So if we want to end the conflict of head and heart, we’ve got to figure out a way to marry this disparate pair.

Remember when I told you the answer to this problem is simple? Well, it is. But it won’t be easy at first, because we’ve been doing it all wrong for so long.

What we have to do is only use our mind to go with ourselves. The Latin root for sin means “to go against.” So we have to learn to be without sin.

We have to learn to constantly realign our decisions to be “with ourselves.”

Have you ever wondered how to tell whether a decision is right? It seems so difficult, doesn’t it? But it becomes so easy when you think “Is this choice going with me, or against me?” You’ll find that the right choice is immediately evident.

If you can learn to practice this every time you make a choice, you’ll start to regain your personal power. You’ll create a marriage of your heart and mind. Maybe then their child (you) won’t have permanent emotional damage from the divorce it’s been suffering from for so long.

Make the choice today. Just try it out. I think you’ll like it.

Go with yourself!