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| Fluff coming down from Union Court. Stolen from the RiotACT. |
"Exams?"
"Fluff. And it signifies exam time as well. But primarily, it's high time for being depressed"
Two months ago I did not even know that fluff was an actual noun. Fluffy was the adjective associated with that feeling of comfort on the bed, on a lazy morning when you actually had to wake up to determine your worth as a person. Not one of depression.
What kind of nexus does this thing I have yet to know of with being down? A university student proposed that "If you're still indoors when the fluff season is around, you have a reason for being depressed as you are yet to be locked up in your room, studying when it arrived"
So instead of loathing the arrival of the season, I was actually looking forward to it.
It was so inconspicuous. Until one day when I was running through the Union Court whilst wearing what was incidentally a baju kurung with less run-worthy tolerance rate to a class I could not afford to arrive late to (again), did I get a sudden encounter with the fluff itself.
From the outside it looked cool, kind of the way snow looks good falling down on people. But where the fluff spared us of the coldness, it overcompensated in causing breathing and sighting on the journey from one building to another an endurance test. Add that in to actually trying to ride the bicycle in a narrow avenue full of dillydallying people - one of the hands covering the face while the other making a faithful maneuver lest someone get hit and ended up bitching on Stalkerspace - thus mandating a label of notoriety to the proprietor.
My reasons are yet to be that delicate. Spring is here. Exam is lurking around in two week's time. And I have managed to drag my battered ego across classes where it was evident that my classmates had been journeying way farther into the book than I did. Ever the excluded wound-licking 'I've got nothing to contribute, sorry" loser that I was, I mentally transcribed the joyful abandon that my groupmates in particular threw to discussing their enviable progress.
I actually realised that I was fast becoming exactly the person I would poke fun at. I came to terms with their intelligence with the most pitiful manner there was - quiet disdain. And after making that thankful exit from the last class dragging my way back for dinner. Dastan! Got a mark, which, as always, was lower than expected. Dastan! Another rejection on the application front. Screw that, I'd like to pity myself for a while.
Ish. The fluff in itself is not a cause - it is a trigger. A trigger to the realisation that I probably was not supposed to be where I was. I know I should be feeling thankful - I am not being shortchanged for anything less than one of the better-regarded law schools in the world (not exactly Harvard material, but hey, 15th - bragging right, right?). I know I should be thankful for being in groups I found hard to fit in with - so I can finally work on my self-insecurity issues. I should be really, really grateful, for being in the company of these people - people who I would be staring and ogling at had they gone to another institution.
Why the sadness, then? Why the constant attempt at running away from problems? Why this increasing insistence to not trust Allah with everything?
On the rare occasions when people actually found me a person worthy of sharing their problems with, oh how easy was it to regurgitate what Kak M said of her experience of failing a semester by 5 marks, "Kita belum meletak sepenuh pengharapan pada Allah. Kalau kita pentingkan sangat result kita tu sampai kita bertuhankan ia, instead of bertuhankan Allah, bersyukurlah kalau Allah bagi kita result yang tak best. Bersyukurlah kalau Allah takdirkan kita malu, ketinggalan. At least Allah nak ingatkan kita yang priorities kita tersangatlah salah"
And then I couldn't help but grit my teeth, "Why this ego?"
"Why this feeling of having a right to infallibility? Why this feeling of pride in what and where it is this petty studies you are doing? Who are you trying to impress? Why this aversion to people who make you realise that you're nothing much, by the end of the day? Why this constant attempt at running away from your problems, wanting hours and hours of blissful ignorance of it, when what you've done is actually very little? Why, this lack of faith and surrender?"
It would be all way too easy to blame it on the fluff, and life in general. It takes a worthy person to take the reality in check, and perhaps, I'm not worthy enough. And then, dastan!
We have certainly created man into hardship. Does he think that never will anyone overcome him? He says, "I have spent wealth in abundance." Does he think that no one has seen him? Have We not made for him two eyes? And a tongue and two lips? And have shown him the two ways? But he has not broken through the difficult pass.
- Al Balad 90: 4-11
It would be all too easy to put the blame in life itself - or, by extension, God. It would be all too easy to carry on, wallowing in self-pity, wahwahwah. But when had people not been in hardship? How often did people choose to do the right thing, which is to take it as a blessing and made it an opportunity to struggle, i.e., to perform the higher jihad? I can't speak for others. But I know that I often neglected to break through the difficult pass. Total surrender to whatever the fluff that circumstances wanted would be all too easy. Much too cowardly, much too irresponsible.
In conclusion, starting tomorrow, I should just screw the fluff as it is. Make my way through the STUVAC. Yay for remotivated self.
Oh wait.
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