I Want it Yesterday
FROM HEARTS TO HEARTS
Wardah Hassan (Malaysia)
“I want it yesterday” is not only a common saying but it has embodied the value in the corporate world I knew then. To a certain extent, I experienced how I became mechanistic and my purpose was nothing less than exceeds my bi-annually performance review which will be translated into merits – salary increment for the following year, career development, and bonus among others. Values of a human capital (read: being) to some extent was reduced to one’s performance review.
Is corporate culture to be blamed in its entirety? Organizational behaviour (OB) shapes an organization but hang on. An organization is not a living thing, yes? So, behaviour of an organization is certainly contributed by the people who operate the organization. Every single one of them. Therefore, OB is not organic and subject to the dynamic of this group of people and its ecosystem.
I signed up to corporate world in my early 20s with compounding confusions since secondary school if not earlier. Why was I confused? I attended both conventional school and madrasah set up – in the morning and afternoon session respectively. The two education systems I reckoned diverged even more as I begun the secondary school especially so in the lab. My heart was not where it is because I was kind of desperate for the two systems to “complement” one another, to fill in my curiosity.
- Why Allah is not mentioned in the lab even though the teacher who taught chemistry, biology and physics were Muslims?
- Why did I learn history in the timeline of prehistoric, cave people, Darwin’s theory?
- Why as if civilization stem from British colonization?
- Why couldn’t I learn science subjects along with art and history?
- Why the students were boxed in Science and Art alone? I want to do both!
There was only one person that able to sooth my soul when those questions dawn upon my curious mind. I continued my journey in the corporate world with his assurance that in time, I will know and my questions will be answered. He said wisdom comes with experience including making mistakes and the addition of age.
On the 16th year of rat racing and climbing the corporate ladder, that one person, my father and I would say the best of teacher (Allah bless all my teachers) answered the calling of his Lord to return to eternity. It felt as if my torch was put out, darkness descends and enveloping my universe.
I wanted to seek solace and calm the storm within myself with the Quran, the sacred book I finished reading at the age of seven with my mother’s guidance. I trembled instead as I just about to read it. I felt estranged from it as I realized that I hardly read it in my adult life. The cover collects dusts on top of my wardrobe. What did I do and what do I need to do to experience sakinah and rekindle the strong bonding I had with it when I was a child?
On top of that, I do not know how to process and accept that my best friend, teacher, guide and father has left me behind with a pouch of unlabeled seeds. What do I do with these seeds and how do I deal with this choking grief? I want this unbearable grief to leave, yesterday!
Since I couldn’t process and make sense of what is happening here in my home country, maybe it is time to expand my horizon. Shall I head to baitul ‘ātiq, the ancient home in Makkah or England. What does the country that once colonized my country look like?
I wasn’t expecting that this journey to the west would change me forever. I received more than what I bargained for. Paradoxically, in that process itself, a staunch corporate lady needs to learn to surrender to the unknown. Setting aside the emotional rage, I explored several cities and countries around England and I arrived at a bookstore in East London. I picked up two books. One of it is Return to the Spirit by Dr Martin Lings.
Again, I almost fall into despair knowing the book was the last one by Dr Lings. I felt then that he was the only one who could console my troubled heart and take away my unprocessed grief with ease. His three foundational questions on the meaning and significance of tears, laughter and hereafter set me in a different frame of mind. As I walked past my timeline to this moment, I string up the pearls of my perhaps-observation:
Education system, systemic failure, distorted values and belief system, identity crisis was the impetus for me to start questioning what I held true all along. I was ambitious to change the world to make it a better place but have I looked within? What is my real purpose of existence and true value and how do I deconstruct the idea about self and its relation to the universe and the Creator?
Rūmī QS
Patience at first is bitter;
but at length, its fruit is sweet.
It gives us heart’s content.” – Rūmī QS
Kuala Lumpur | 24th June 2022
