20080310

Questions about life

Hello, people!!

Finally, after several months joining this blog, now is the first time I write on it..Haha.
So, a brief introductory first..
I'm Shirin (it's a good name,right? hehehe), one of the student in Economics UI and I'm the lucky one who have such great friends here..:)

These days, I've been thinking about life..
Why are there some people who have bad luck in their life?
If Mr. Bush wasn’t the president of USA, would my life be the same?
If my parents hadn’t moved to Jakarta, would I get to FE UI?
What is the difference between me and other people? And why are we different?
If my name was not Shirin, would I be the same person as today?
If my dad didn't marry my mom, would I exist?
If now I was not writing on this blog, would all the things be the same?
and so many other if, if, and if..

I remember one day, when I was doing my pray in my mom's bedroom and I was about 7 or 8 years old, something just came into my mind and made me think about life hardly. I suddenly thought that if I wasn’t Shirin, what would I be? I remember that it was the first time I hardly think about life..
And until now, I still keep thinking about it when I’m not doing anything.

Sometimes, I also think that one event can cause other events to occur.
So, if I was not accepted in FEUI, would this blog be made? :D

Any of you can help me to find the answers?

By the way, I’ve just got some good quotes and I’ll share it to you:
There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because his conscience tells him it is right....(Martin Luther)
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life (Winston Churchill)

20080303

The Depth and The Stone..

Another simple philosophy here..

I am talking about an analogy of water depth now. Let say it is a lake with a certain depth. When a lake is so shallow, you can see the bottom of the lake almost clearly. When a lake is so deep, all you can see is the darkness of the bottom. But, you cannot see the bottom of the lake itself.

Now throw a lake with a stone. The more shallow the lake, the wave will remain vibrating longer. Throwing a bigger stone to the lake will also create a longlasting wave. Also, the water will be easily crumbled when the water be thrown by a stone if the depth is so shallow.

What does it means?

Water depth is an analogy of your knowledge. The little you know, and other people could see through the very bottom of your thinking, just like when you see the bottom of the shallow lake. The more you know, and other people will find it hard to see through your thinking, just like when you see the bottom of a deep lake. This 'hard to see through thinking' does not have the meaning of cannot be understood. It is all about predictable or unpredictable thinking. People with depth will become an unpredictable person. They can come up with a very special idea that no one have ever predict it or expect it. While a very shallow person will have an ordinary thinking that everybody could predict, so everybody can prepare for the counter attack.

The more shallow the lake, the longer the wave will remains vibrating. It means that when you strike a shallow person with intelligence (stone is the analogy of intelligence), they will receive a great disadvantage (wave is hte analogy of damage) and the disadvantage will remain longer, vice versa. The greater he intelligence you had the greater the disadvantage you can inflict to the person.

The depth represents the KNOWLEDGE you have. The stone represents the INTELLIGENCE you have. The more knowledge you have, the intelligence your opponent need to take you on. Knowledge is the representative of defense while intelligence is the representative of attack. To hold of your opponents argument when you are in a some kind of debate, you have to use your knowledge to break the logic that your opponent use to strike you. To strike your opponent, you have to use your intelligence to seek his weaknesses on his arguments. Having both of them is necessary.

That is the analogy of 'The Depth and The Stone'..

The Theory of Love (SR and LR Case)

Dear humanity around the world.

As an opening, I want to share my cynic-est thought about how finding a girl/boyfriend. You know what is it? Yes, to me, there is a short run trade-offs between the qualities of face (handsomeness or beauty-ness) of a people, with the how long her/his love relationship will he/she kept.

Now here’s the logic. A person with a good looking face will usually disloyal to his/her relationship. Why? Assume that he or she knows that he or she has a good looking face, this kind of people will have nothing to lose if they failed his/her relationship. Why, they’ll easy to get a new one. Another effect is they have a high bargaining power if they have a conflict with their couple.

Otherwise, people with a not-good looking face will usually more loyal to his/her relationship. Yes you know why, they are realize that looking for people that loves him/her is really hard, with an assumption that he or she know that he or she has a not-good looking face, and feel very depressed finding his/her lover. They’ll uneasy to get a new one. And of course, they’ll have a low bargaining power.

Are you belief in that? It’s up to you. Maybe it’ll help you to find your perfect girl/boyfriend.

But that is not the main idea ladies and gentleman, that is only my shallow thought with a lot of assumption. And... it is short run. When the relationship turns to long run, we can decrease the assumption, because the factor that support the relationship is increase, such as; commitment, trust, willingness to sacrifice, etc. Couples will start to learn how precious their relationship is in long run. Why, because they start to use HEART not ego.

To explain this, I will use that two shallow theorem up there. A person with good looking, will start to realize that their good looking face will be useless to his/her relationship, unless they use their heart to feel this relationship precious. They will decrease his bargaining power and start to give it to their pair.

A person with not-good looking will have their confidence increase, because their pair has shown a true meaning of love, they not just love by looking on the face, but the personality. So their bargaining power will increase though.

If you agree with the explanation above, you will agree with this conclusion.

THE LONG RUN RELATIONSHIP WILL MAKE ALL EQUALIZE

So guys, make your relationship a long run one. When is it? It’s like the Theory of Production. Short run production is when we just only increase one factor of production and let the others same. And productions enter the long run when we increase more than one factor of production to increase output. It takes same with this SR and LR Theory of Love. The assumption of this theory is all people is approach the one who they love for the reason of his or her face quality (but in real world, a lot of people act like this right?). When you just only enter the Quality of Face as your Factor of Love and let your COMMITMENT, TRUST, WILLINGNESS TO SACRIFICE, etc. stay the same, you are having an Short Run Relationship. This relationship tends to be uneverlasting and you won’t get anything from it. But when you increase another Factor of Love, COMMITMENT, TRUST, and WILLINGNESS TO SACRIFICE, you will make the relationship is possible to be everlasting and you’ll learn a lot from this relationship.

So, you knew the benefits of Long Run Relationship, why you won’t try? Like AIESEC said, “it’s up to you!”

The frog jumping

One of my friend ever told me that “ if you put frog on the box with tall 7cm for 6 months, the frog just can jump up to 7cm even when we put it on the outside of the box for its whole life”.
The simulation maybe like this : when the frog in the 7cm tall of box for 6 months, it usual for jumping just up to 7cm otherwise the frog can jump more than 7cm, and if we let it go outside the box, on the pond it just can jump up to 7cm like before, shorter than other frogs can do naturally, because it has been limited in jumping.

How about if it isn’t a frog but human, one person, we can called her as X. X always has her own fear : I am not good in English, I am not beautiful, I am not a good speaker, I can’t do debate, I can’t write some writings interestingly, I am not smart enough and bla..blaa..bla.. Are those things right? Maybe not, if she just thinking and talking about that without try to find the real evidence of that, because those are just “the limits” that she creates for herself, she makes herself feel she is nothing and can’t do everything. So when there are lot of opportunities around her, she never brave to try, she always meet the tall wall that prevents her take those, like the frog when big world is on its face it always thinking that it is on the 7cm box not on the pond where it can jump as high as it want. Box not only blocks its ability for jumping but also its mind for thingking it can jump higher than that.

She or you never know for exactly how high is your real limit until you try for jumping, but not jumping in the box but at the pond. You never know you can swim until you try to do it. Opportunities always there, what you have to do is take it, be brave to try, and never felt afraid to lose. The loser is not somebody who lose the game, but somebody who leave the game before running to the field.

The key is “challenge your self”, never create limits to you. Just keep trying to take all opportunities around you, whether the result is perfect or not is not the main problem because we just a human being, the most important is you know for exactly how high your limit after you try for jumping as high as you can do best, not only measure it on your mind with your own fear because it isn’t your real limit that’s your box. Proof that You are the frog on the pond not the frog in the 7cm box !

20080302

You, God, and the Concept of Unity

Have you ever think about God, who is He, where is He, what is He, or even how can I meet Him? Well, this weekend I went to a course held by The Beshara School. It is some kind of a spiritual course that helps you knows more about who you really are and what is the essential of being a human. Beshara itself means a good news. And i am going to tell you about what i have heard. I do not expect you to believe in what I am going to say, but it is better to think more deeply about it.

We often heard that God is nearer to us than ourself, than our soul, and than our breath. So where is He exactly? Well, there is a thought that describe God. It says, "God is me, I am no other than Him, but I am not him." This sentence means that God is in yourself, ourself. Because you are the manifestation of the existence of the truth, while the truth means God. I will give you an example. If you have a flower in front of the mirror, the flower itself would be the Reality (God). And the image of flower in the mirror is you, or us (the servants). You see that there is two individual, the real flower and the image of flower. The flower can say that it is the flower. But the one in the mirror can't say that it is the flower because it is just an image of the real flower. So actually there is only one individual which is the real flower.

I will give you another example. When you see a white light goes into a prism, it would divided to some colors. In this example, the white light is the Reality and the colors are the Immanence. The white light is the source of the colors and the colors have the characteristics of the white light. But it does not have all characteristic of white light. Every color is unique. They do not same one and another. The red is red and it is impossible for red to be yellow, green, blue, and of course white. So, we can say that each person is an extension of the being in the relative world, dressed up in dimensions of space and time.

According to Ibn 'Arabi there is only Reality in existence. This Reality we view from two different angles, which we call it haqq (the Real) when we regad it as the Essence of all phenomena
and khalq (the Immanence) when we regard it as the manifested phenomena of that Essence. Haqq and khalq, Reality and Appearance, the One and the Many, are only two subjective aspects of One Reality: it is a real unity but an empirical diversity. The Reality is God. "If you regard Him trough Him", Ibn 'Arabi says, " then He regard Himself trough Himself, which is the state of unity; but if you regard Him through yourself then the unity is vanishes."

The One is everywhere as an Essence, and nowhere as the Universal Essence which is above and beyond all 'where' and 'how'. "Unity has no other meaning than two (or more) things being actually identical, but conceptually distinguishable the one from the other; so in one sense the one is the other; in another is not." "Multiplicity is due to different points of view, not to an actual division in the One Essence." So, basically every person is different but we came from the same source, the One. And what seems to multiply the One is the ahkam (predications) which we predicate of external object - the fact that we bring them under categories of color, size, shape and temporal and spatial relations, etc. There is a complete reciprocity between haqq and khalq as understood by Ibn 'Arabi, and complete mutual dependence. Like two logical correlatives, neither has any meaning without other. For example, there are no one who will be called as Lord if there were no servants.

There is God side or God spot in every single us. Everyone has the same possibilities to be able find God inside them. There is a hadist, the more you know yourself, the more you know your God. And multiplicity is not what really happens among human being. It is us who make it looks like different by predicating the external object. Actually there is nothing that makes another person is better to another. It is according to what their contains of. So, what kind of person do you want to be? What color do you want to be? Because the color of the water depends on what it contains.

I am not really sure that what i have told you is clear enough. For more information, just click www.beshara.org. I am also not really clear with what I have heard. But think it more deeply will make you peaceful. Thinking about it will make you a student of School of life. We will always learn from life. Not only from our life, but also from other person's life. If you able to mix up the puzzle from those what you have learn in life, you will know God and you can see everything with God's eye.