For what it's worth...

Have you ever encountered moments in life when you'd stop and think "is it worth it?". Over apa2lah, be it what you did or what you saw other people did. I'm sure you had.

Coz I had one recently. I was at a jualan amal that my Yayasan Salam friends did to raise fun for charity event we're gonna have at 2 orphanage homes during fasting month...

We were closing the stall for the day, most of us busy packing up the stuffs, and one guy was counting the "proceeds" for the day, in the end he said out loud "seratus empat puluh tujuh ringgit" and everybody cheered...

I paused for a while and thought to myself "really? with all these time and with all these volunteers for this amount of money?" well, it was kinda expected when you sell everything at just 1 ringgit, but still... and that's when the multimillion dollar question "is it worth it?" strikes.

It's not long before I got the answer. I was driving home when I think I found it.

You see, the seratus-empat-puluh-tujuh-ringgit is not the end for all these effort and time that these group of people put together.

It is only a material, explicit reason that brought all these together. But it's not the real cause. There's far greater good that was created from all the efforts and time the volunteers sacrificed, much more that the mere ratusan ringgit...

And that, my friend, is the inner self enrichment that is created when you do something good with no expected return. It is a selfless deed that you do thinking just to help someone else out there, knowing for sure that you ain't gonna get anything in return, or at least materially.

It is a satisfaction that you cannot get with money. You know, like when you let one car from the other side of the road to cross in front of you to get to this side of a turning when the traffic is really bad.

Or, like when you help a total stranger by the roadside who is asking for money, and you know full well that the stranger could just be a part of a complicated syndicate trying to syphone money off hardworking blue-colar workers like us, but truth is, that stranger could as well be a genuine unfortunate human-being undergoing difficult moment in his/her life. But you helped anyway. And you feel good afterwards.

Those examples that I used would of course do very little justice to what my friends did. But it's just an easy metaphor.

You see, when you put together a bunch of people who are so looking forward to do selfless, good things, the eagerness and spirit sort of multiplies. Because you are with friends. And I proudly say that it is these kind of people who would ensure that us Malaysians do not turn into our southern neighbours, who are so obsessed with material achievements in life that they disregard societal value and the need to care about others, and thus in turn the need to care about their inner self. And what does it mean in the end - nothing. It creates a feel of nothingness in life.

I am so proud of my friends...