The Haze

srizals@gmail.com

Just when you think that everything is going to be alright, something unexpected came and caught you off-guard. It seems the haze is back again with its peculiar smell of burning wood stuff. I don't think it's going to be any time soon for Malaysians to get out of this season of the flu. Rumours been running around about people getting infected by the second wave of swine flu and one actually died just around my neighbourhood, but, as the nature of rumours, the actual person who heard the first news and passed on the news to the second person and et cetera and et cetera remained elusive if not totally a mystery. Make you feel like you're in a twilight zone or something. To accept news or point of arguments before checking them out yourself would be disastrous, of course.

Some take the easy way out and blame the Composer of the events, totally rejecting the power that lies in each one of us to navigate our course and thinking our action through, at least thoroughly. Things happen, sometimes, if not most of the time, it turned out not exactly in our favour and it is quite frustrating. But if we looked closely, we do have something to do with it. We have left out our reasoning of things, we take things for granted and always hope that everything would work out without needing us to get all dirty and soaked up with puny things that don't even matter in most of our friend's life. As if this life has no rules and regulations governing its complex and intertwined existence and occurrences.

Some would look deep inside himself and weigh out all the actions and reactions that occurred and led him to conclude in understanding the final outcome that befall before his eyes. Some would learn from things that had happened to be a better man, much better than yesterday and hopefully would be steadfast of becoming better and better, the day after tomorrow. If we choose to stop developing, it would be a sad total lost to humanity since one of its member has stop functioning as a force that drives good and defends it against the evil ones that refused to be associated with mankind anymore. They have become man-gods, man-beast more likely and behave in such strange ways that no man can critic or has the right to at least advice him to stop being an unashamed monster that he had become, so proudly.

Now come the big question, should we blame the leaders that were raised among us, for the fallouts and failures of their people? Who should we blame for the previous genocide in Cambodia, China and Russia? How about the Hutu and Tutsi feuds? What about the itchy hands of some influential Westerners in dealing with wars, babies and money? What about all the civilians that were killed in hundred years of wars that we fought in the name of our holy freedom? What would Gandhi say when he found out how divided India had become? Didn't he express his disapproval of such divide and foretold of the dire consequences? But I don't think his own people listened to him. Didn't they all were blessed with IQ higher than us, if not their EQ. Didn't they claimed that they are the height of mankind's achievement and intellectualities that saved our existence to this very day?

If a clear set of rules is and was already there to guide us, is it not our own self is to be blame, if we couldn't at least have a look at it and pause to think for a second or two and look back and see what we have done to get ourselves where we are now? Are we trying to justify our own weaknesses and arrogant ways? Believe me when I say this, I deal with arrogance almost on daily basis and it's hard to suppress your own ego when dealing with them. It never has been easy, it never will, but the toughness of the trial also taken into consideration, our own personal strength and endurance. It is always easy to blame others for the fault of so many, especially when they are no longer breathing and able to defend their actions and clear our doubts about them. How could they? No one can live forever. Maybe it is time for us to take charge of our actions and be the wise judge of ourselves. We are not responsible for others’ action, we can only lend a helping hand and if they spit at it rudely, what else could we do? But at the end of the day, at least we can justify our actions and said at least, I have tried.

How we ignore and heed our leaders, painted our own self image through history.
Hmm. Who’s going to take the blame for tonight haze?