That was a response I receive one day after saying “we live to serve others”. I think about it for a while and blabber on talking about roughly the same thing. But I can feel that my explanation is not complete, there is a point missing, I wonder what was it. I said to myself “what on earth do I have to say to make it clear”. That was more than 2 or 3 weeks ago. This morning, as I watch Prof Muhaya’s talk at “hello on two” regarding Power of Sharing, it struck me. Prof Muhaya said, “Host to God or hostage to ego?” that’s it! Eureka!
Funny thou, I heard that statement from Prof many times before but I never seem to be able to use the statement wisely.
in a perfect world, everyone live to serve others, always helping one another...
The way I see it…
We live to serve others. Normally, the one who will serve us will be others of course, since others also live to serve others, which include us in it. Well, that is what will happen in a perfect world, where everyone serves others. The problem is, all of us agree, we are not like angels that have no needs to satisfy desires, or what we muslims called “nafsu”. All of us have the need to want something for ourselves ,correct? Therefore, even how much we serve others, is it a guarantee others will serve us too? Again, like what Prof Har like to say “In whatever we do we always asked, what’s in it for me?
Well, the answer is simple: are we host to God or hostage to our ego?
Host to God
I looked up the word host (in Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Host), it says ; host is a person who PROVIDES HOSPITALITY. Then I looked up the word HOSPITALITY. Of course, there was a lot of meaning. One of them is “cordial reception: kindness in welcoming guests or strangers.But in simpler term, we serve God kindly and willingly. When we serve God, “willingly”, there is no stress. There are a lot of reasons; these are some that I manage to brainstorm,
- God does not really need us to serve Him; He got nothing to lose if we don’t.
- God will be satisfied by anything good that we do to serve Him, even how small they are
- We know that we will gain so many good from it as God had promised
- God Himself is the judge of our doing, and He is the Ultimate Judge.
But then, what if we serve others and they are not thankful? Here’s the best part, when we want to give something good to other people, they don’t want it, refuse to take it, or fail to appreciate it, WE GOT NOTHING TO LOSE. We have done our part, and it had already been written as good. Remember, we live to serve God, if human don’t want to be served then serving God alone is already an abundance of goodness. Like is said before, God is the judge of our doings, not humans. If we did something with sincerity and kindness, God will know and He will be the judge whether we will receive good or not from our doings. Hoping from God is always better than hoping from humans or ourselves.
“Expecting even small things from others is frequently disappointing, expecting too much from ourselves is suicidal, expecting everything from God is both peaceful and rewarding”~Zatel Iman (me,hehe..)
As a law of what goes around comes around, when we help others a lot, others will help us. When we help God ALL THE TIME, God will also help us all the time. Therefore, more reason not to worry isn’t it?
The more we serve others, the more we serve God. The more we serve God the more God will help us. When we help out a lot, with kindness and sincerity, we know we will be helped. We will always be in confidence of God, and the help from God. Therefore we will always be in peace, anticipating answers from the unknown and expecting good for the good we done. The more good we did in our life, the more we will be at peace. When we are at peace, we are together with the subconscious. If we are together with the subconscious… okay, too long, that is a different story… (^_^).
God will NEVER be cruel to us and to give us sufferings for no reason. There is always a good reason for everything. But that’s another story. (read: http://zatelimanrozali.blogspot.com/2010/04/dunia-yang-adil.html)
Therefore, there is so much greatness from being a host to God, as opposed to being a hostage to our ego.
Hostage to Ego
I looked up the word hostage and it says a hostage is a prisoner who is held by one party to insure that another party will meet specified terms. Ego is an inflated feeling of pride in our superiority to others. It is the felling of wanting something to satisfy ourselves only and therefore is also the same with our desire or nafsu.
Being hostage in a war would be devastating. Being hostage to ego on the other hand, is not devastating NOW, but it WILL BE, sooner or later. In fact, more people prefer being hostage to ego because the answer to the question of “what’s in it for me” is always there. There is always something to satisfy our nafsu or desire. Because of this it is owh so sweet…
However…
The disadvantage is:
- Our ego is always in need to be satisfied, it NEED, WANT, very very PUSHY! Like an annoying little girl shouting “ I want it, I want it” and cried until our eardrums explode.
- It can be satisfied the first time, but the more we give, the more it will become unsatisfied the more it wants more. Very very ungrateful and greedy!
- We will not gain anything good from God and to some extent even gain God’s fury… Very very dangerous
- Ego will be the judge of our doings and according to the above it is annoying, greedy and ungrateful. So when we fail to satisfy it, it will result in stress, disappointment, anger and sometimes even hate.
So what would it be?
Host to God or hostage to ego? That is a question only you can answer for yourself. The only thing I’m doing now is lying down the pros and cons (which is obviously bias, but very true ;p).
~InsyaAllah will be discussed in further details~~
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