Saturday, October 07, 2006

Pain: A Blessing in Disguise

Early yesterday morning while I was working online, I received a rude shock: a virus sneaked into my system! Unlike their normal modus operandi - via emails and bursts of attacks online - this email came in through a message on Yahoo Messenger. Initially I was pleasantly surprised to receive the message. But as I was working and did not want to veer my attention, I left the message window open thinking of replying once the work was done. But horrors! The moment I pressed the 'Enter" key, the whole system went bonkers!

Multitude of windows suddenly sprung up; the cursor was irritatingly sluggish; various sounds - some unheard before - suddenly kept repeating themselves; and the screen was intermittently flashing red as though it was dancing to a John Travolta disco era music! After almost 5 minutes of indecisive actions, I decided to reboot the system.

Alhamdulillah, though the system was chugging heavy, I managed to activate one of the two antivirus software. What should have normally been a 5-minute operation, took almost 90 painstaking minutes to complete. But when it was done, the virus was contained sufficiently for me to activate the other a-v. And after a 15-minute battle, the virus was at last defeated leaving only several files as casualties. Otherwise, the whole system seem intact and operational. But what a pain it was.

Needless to say, I was fuming mad and angry at the episode, and was cursing the people who invented such inconvenience for other people. As my mind was conjuring the various and most inhumane torture methods on those virus inventors, I am suddenly reminded of a verse (cannot for the moment remember whether its Quranic or Hadith): Pain, even if its as small as the thorn, serves to expiate one of his sins and cause a rise in ranks.

MasyAllah! Allah the Most Beneficient and the Most Merciful, and He is the Most Compassionate. As strange and ironic it may seem, but pain - something which human as a whole try to distant ourselves - can, and is a 'method' which would help us to be closer to Allah. We are reminded - during those moments of agony - that we are nothing but His servant, and that we are helpless except that which He wills. It should go without saying that we, off course, have to readily accept His wills. That, I assure you - and ashamedly - try as I might, is a platform I have yet to attain.

4 comments:

Kak Teh said...

there is indeeda virus in YM . People have been receiving YM's purportedly from me - redirecting them to geocities. I only knew abtthis when friends told me. Then I received the same message from some friends on my list. So just delete and do not open. i think it goes through the addresses on yr list. Pls let me know what kind of info did you getin yr ym?
btw - I have added you on www.sentraalstation.blogspot.com is that okay? senang sikit nak ke sini.

cakapaje said...

Alhamdulillah, thank you for adding me. Cuma...malu sikit, cause, don't think I'm a good writer - asyik silap words, grammar and spelling!

The message I received is roughly like this: 'Click on the right panel and send to all your friends. Then, you'd be able to know not only who is onlne even when they're invinsible, but will also be able to with whom they're chatting and how many windows they have opened.' Somthing like that lah...And the YM address is from Turkey lak tu.

Sofian said...

You sound so profound.

Do you personally experience a lot of pain?

And I'd like to know your opinion about people who are 'pain-magnets'. Are they all on their way to sainthood?

Take care, sweetheart!

cakapaje said...

Hi Esah,

I, sound profound? Hmm...must be because of the virus kut :)

Pain-magnet to sainthood? Hmmm...can't say; I'm not a scholar there.