Want what you have...

“If you can't have what you want, you should want what you have lah...."

The above was what a dear friend, who recently turned 70 years old, said to me once many years ago. It has been one of the wisest things ever said to me, and over the years I have often impressed a few other people by repeating it to them.

The words came out at a time when I was in a situation during which I desperately wanted more than what I actually had. It was not as if I had nothing out of the situation, but being young, impatient and not-so-wise yet in the ways of the world, I wanted more, without even realising how much I already had. I did not occur to me at the time that what I had then was probably more then other people would get out of the situation. I was in fact unhappy when I should be so happy.

I have always carried those wise words with me and have over the years learnt to be truly grateful for the things I have. One cannot have everything in life and one does not always get what one wants. But sometimes not getting something you want is actually for the best. And sometimes you get something even better than what you actually want. There is always a reason for everything. Allah knows best.

And I have also learnt to be careful in wishing for something so desperately, for sometimes when you actually get it, it turns out to be a disappointment and a burden.

As for dear wise friend, I hope he will have many happy, healthy years ahead. It has indeed been a long, fruitful and great friendship and he had been a mentor of sorts in my younger days (but got rather carried away till another friend bluntly told him to stop “school-mastering" me around). My friend had an opinion on everything, a dry sense of humour which irritated me no end sometimes and we do not always agree with each other. But we do have a very supportive rapport and a lot of common interests. I will always remember his matter-of-fact response to my asking if I could bring him anything whenever I went to visit him - “ just bring your good, cantankerous (quarrelsome) self !"

And if he asked me today of one happy recollection of the things he imparted on me, it will be the time when we both looked up to the clear, brilliant night sky over the South China Sea in Cherating and he was reading it like a map, pointing out to me the planets, the stars and the Southern Cross, and explaining to me the constellations.

So clever lah…..