Month: April 2012

Menjaga Orangtua Itu Berkat Bukan Beban

http://www.dayswithmyfather.com/

Menghormati orangtua adalah satu-satunya perintah di dalam Alkitab yang menjanjikan umur panjang sebagai hadiah (Efesus 6: 1-3). Salah satu bentuk bakti dan penghormatan kita terhadap orangtua adalah dengan menjaga dan mendampingi masa tua mereka. Berikut beberapa tips untuk para single agar tanggung jawab menjaga orang tua menjadi tugas yang menyenangkan :

Terima Perubahan Mereka

Pertambahan usia orangtua akan diiringi dengan berbagai perubahan baik fisik, maupun psikologis. Secara fisik, tentu mereka sudah bukan orang-orang kuat seperti dulu, akan banyak kemunduran dalam hal tenaga, daya tahan maupun daya ingat mereka. Selain Perubahan fisik, perubahan psikologis pasti terjadi. Ada banyak orang yang masuk usia lanjut menjadi pribadi yang lebih sensitif atau bahkan mungkin bersikap kekanak-kanakan.

Hal-hal seperti inilah yang harus kita pahami, kita tidak boleh menuntut mereka menjadi seperti mereka ketika masih muda. Sebaliknya, kita yang harus berusaha menyesuaikan diri dengan keadaan mereka saat ini.

Hindari Miskom, Lepaskan Pengampunan

Perbedaan generasi antara orang muda dan orangtua, sikap orangtua yang berubah menjadi kekanak-kanakan, ekspresi orangtua yang kadang sulit diterjemahkan, dan lain sebagainya adalah contoh hal-hal yang sangat rawan untuk terjadi miskomunikasi yang berujung pertengkaran.

Hal ini harus kita sikapi dengan bijaksana, caranya adalah dengan melepaskan pengampunan. Seperti apa yang Alkitab katakan, janganlah simpan amarahmu terlalu lama agar jangan sampai hal ini menjadi akar pahit. Komunikasikan segala sesuatu sesuai porsinya.

Cerdik Membagi Waktu

Tuntutan pekerjaan dan kebutuhan sosialisasi kita dengan orang lain, membuat kita tidak bisa memberikan seluruh waktu kita untuk menjaga orangtua. Karena itu kita harus bisa bijaksana dalam membagi waktu termasuk memberikan prioritas. Orangtua membutuhkan teman bicara, jika kita tidak bisa selalu bersama mereka, mintalah bantuan keluarga atau kerabat untuk mencukupi kebutuhan orangtua kita ini.

Panti Jompo Bukan Jawaban

Tempat terbaik untuk orangtua menjalani hari tua mereka adalah keluarga. Karena itu sangat tidak disarankan untuk memasukan orangtua ke panti jompo, hal ini akan membuat mereka merasa terbuang dan akan buruk bagi kondisi kesehatan mereka.

Tingkatkan Pengetahuan

Pengetahuan kita tentang kesehatan orangtua sangatlah terbatas, untuk itu kita harus terus meningkatkan pengetahuan tersebut lewat berkonsultasi dengan ahli seperti dokter, ataupun membaca buku. Kita perlu mengetahui apa yang baik dan tidak untuk kesehatan orangtua, meliputi makanan, jenis olahraga, maupun hal-hal lainnya yang akan menunjang kesehatan mereka.

Tumbuhkan Iman Orangtua

Tidak semua orangtua dewasa dalam imannya. Dengan membiasakan untuk memiliki saat teduh dan waktu berdoa bersama, kita telah membantu mereka untuk lebih dekat dengan Tuhan.

credit : jawaban.com

Beautiful and Sad Meditation on The sufferings of The Sorrowful Mother written by the Italian mystic Maria Valtorta

When on the ground, they would like to lay Him on the sheet that they have spread on their mantles. But Mary wants Him. She has opened Her mantle, letting it hang on one side, and She is sitting with Her knees rather apart to form a cradle for Her Jesus…He is now in His Mother’s lap… And He looks like a big tired child who is asleep all cuddled up in his mother’s lap…Jesus’ head is resting on His Mother’s shoulder. And She calls Him…

She calls Him in a heart-rending voice. She then detaches Him from Her shoulder and caresses Him with Her left hand, She takes and stretches out His hands and, before folding them on His dead body, She kisses them and weeps on their wounds. Then She caresses His cheeks, particularly where they are bruised and swollen, She kisses His sunken eyes, His mouth lightly twisted to the right and half-open. She would like to tidy His hair, as She has tidied His beard encrusted with blood…and She seems to be holding the tender head of a new-born baby with Her fingers, so delicately does She do it. And when She succeeds in removing the torturing crown, She bends to cure all the scratches of the thorns with Her kisses…

Mary never tires of caressing those frozen limbs. With even greater delicacy than if She were touching those of a new-born baby, She takes the poor tortured hands, She clasps them in Her own, She kisses the fingers and stretches them, She tries to connect the gaping wounds, as if She wished to doctor them, so that they may not ache so much and She presses those hands, which can no longer caress, against Her cheeks, and moans and moans in Her dreadful grief. She straightens and joins the poor feet, which are so limp, as if they were deadly tired of walking so far on our behalf. But they have been displaced too much on the cross, and the left one in particular is almost flat, as if it had no ankle…

She then attends to Jesus’ head again and straightens it, because it is lightly bent back and much to the right. She tries to close His eyelids, which persist in remaining half-open, and His mouth, which has remained open, contracted and a little twisted to the right. She tidies His hair, which only yesterday was beautiful and tidy, and now has become a tangle heavy with blood. She disentangles the longer locks, She smoothes them on Her fingers and curls them to give them back the form of the lovely hair of Her Jesus, so soft and curly. And She moans and moans, because She remembers when He was a little boy… It is the fundamental reason for Her grief: the recollection of Jesus’ childhood, of Her love for Him, of Her carefulness…

Her lamentation makes me [Maria Valtorta] suffer. And when moaning She says: “What have they done to You, Son?,” not being able to Put up with seeing Him thus, naked, rigid, on a stone, She takes Him in Her arms, passing Her arm under His shoulders and pressing Him to Her heart with the other hand and lulling Him, moving exactly as in the grotto of the Nativity, Her gesture makes me weep and suffer, as if a hand rummaged in my heart.

4th October 1944.

The terrible spiritual distress of Mary.

The Mother is standing near the anointing stone caressing, contemplating, moaning, weeping. The flickering light of the torches illuminates Her face now and again, and I see large tear drops stream down the cheeks of Her ravaged face. And I can hear Her words. Every one of them. All of them, very clearly, although whispered between Her lips, a real conversation of a mother’s soul with the soul of Her Son. I am told to write them.

“Poor Son! How many wounds!… How much You have suffered! Look what they have done to You!… How cold You are, Son! Your fingers are ice-cold. And how motionless they are! They seem to be broken. Never, not even in the sound sleep of a child, or in the heavy sleep after working as an artisan, were they so inert… And how cold they are! Poor hands! My darling, My love, My holy love, give them to Your Mother! Look how lacerated they are! John, look what a gash! Oh! cruel men! Here, give Me this wounded hand of Yours. That I may dress it. Oh! I will not hurt You… I will use kisses and tears, and I will warm it with My breath and My love…Why is time so long now? Ah! inhuman torture! Because you are dead. They have killed You! You are no longer on the Earth! No longer! Wherever I send My soul to look for Yours and embrace it, because finding You, having You, feeling You was the life of My body and of My spirit, wherever I look for You with the wave of My love, I no longer find you, I do not find You any more. Nothing of You is left to Me but these cold soulless remains!”

Now the heart-broken Mother bends once again over Her Son, estranged to everything that is not He, and She whispers slowly: “…Now… Now I am alone and I am dying, too. But I will love You for two: for those who have loved You so little that they abandoned You at the moment of sorrow; I will love You for those who have hated You, I will love You for the whole world, Son. You will not feel the chill of the world. No, You will not feel it…Oh! it is My right and My duty as a Mother. It is My wish. There is no one but the Mother Who can have it, Who can have a love as big as the universe for Her Son.”
…
What is Your Heart? The flame of Mine, that split to condense in a crown around the kiss given by God to His Virgin. That is what your Heart is. Ah! (The shout is so heart-rending that the Magdalene hastens to succour Her with John. The other women dare not move and weeping and veiled, look stealthily from the opening). Ah! they have broken it! That is why You are so cold, and I am so cold! There is no longer inside You the flame of My heart, and I can no longer continue to live through the reflection of that flame, which was Mine and which I gave You to make Your heart. Here, here, here, on My breast! Before death kills Me, I want to warm You up, I want to lull You. I used to sing to You: “There is no home, there is no food, there is nothing but sorrow”. O prophetic words! Sorrow, sorrow, sorrow for You, for Me! I used to sing to You: “Sleep, sleep on My heart”. Also now: here, here, here… , And sitting on the edge of the stone, She takes Him in Her lap, passing one arm of Her Son round Her shoulders, resting His head on Her shoulder, and bending Her head on His, holding Him close to Her breast, lulling and kissing Him, heart-broken and heart-rending.

~ “The Poem of the Man-God” by Maria Valtorta

Oscar Wilde’s story “The Nightingale and the Rose”

In the story, a young man falls in love with a girl, who tells him that she will dance with him at the upcoming ball if he hands her a red rose. However, the boy only has white roses growing in his garden and he becomes very upset. A nightingale hears him crying and is taken by his story. The bird decides to get a red rose for him.

He flies to two different bushes asking them for a red rose, but they have only yellow and pink roses. He then flies to a bare bush that tells him that it can grow a red rose only if the nightingale gives up his life for it and sings to him the entire night as the thorn pierces his heart. The blood of the bird will help to grow a beautiful red rose. So the bird decides to do this and kills himself.

The next day, the boy finds the flower and brings it to the girl. The girl responds that another man gave her jewelry and that is a far more expensive gift than any flower…and rejects him.

Japan Perfects Art of Synchronized Walking

We already knew Japanese people were awesome at crazy game shows, toys, and commercials, and now we can add this to the list: synchronized walking. Only Japan could take a normal, everyday activity such as walking and turn it into a dazzling dance of sorts. Watch as Japanese men and women perform this insanely detailed marching routine, in smart-looking blazers to boot.

Me as Gollum

 

Of all the characters in J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy, Golum had roles that very humanly  characters it represents the human nature that greedy, grumpy, lonely, desperate to be loved and so on.
I always thought Gollum just became what he was because he was weak and gave into temptation, but these lines changed my opinion of him:
“No loyal friend
Was ever there for me”

I believe that that’s referring to Sam, who saved Frodo from the destructive powers of the rings a few times in the movies. Maybe if Gollum had had someone like Sam around to help him he wouldn’t have turned into the miserable creature he was..

 

Introverts need time alone, but we can also get lonely

my own video about introvert personality

 

For the many years I didn’t know what an introvert was, I told people close to me that I guessed I was a “loner.” It was the only way I could describe the fact that although I might chitchat and joke around with others when we were all together, when it came time to run errands I enjoyed just taking off alone. It usually did not occur to me to ask someone if they wanted to come and look at [clothes, sofas, books, plants, cat food] with me. After all, I was the one who needed whatever it was, and I can definitely think better and make better decisions when no one is talking to me. As I’ve said before, I have a lot of great friends I’ve made over the years, and I really enjoy their company. But it’s just in my nature to head out on my own when I need to do something. For lack of a better term, I used the term “loner” to label myself quickly when people would express hurt at being left out of all the fun I was having. (Sadly, the news media and people who just don’t know any better often use that term to mean someone who’s actually antisocial: one who hates society and may even do active harm like mass shootings).

Although I need to be alone a certain percent of my time, and I have a blast when reading or doing other things on my own, I’m also capable of being really lonely. Once in a while I have found myself in a situation where I was alone for a weekend and wanted to do something with a friend but for some reason the ones I’d try to contact were unavailable. Maybe it was a holiday weekend or just a coincidence, but I have found myself alone on a weekend with no plans at all and realized I was terribly lonely. By late on a Saturday afternoon of such a weekend, I have actually been the one who’s raking or weeding in the front yard, talking to any and every neighbor who walks by, or walking a few miles, hoping I’ll run into someone I know as I go. When that happened, I wondered – am I not a loner like I thought? What happened to the woman who loves to run out alone to do her own thing? It just didn’t add up! The answer is, it’s not that I want to be alone all the time. I like people and enjoy them very much. I just can’t be with people all of the time. I am an introvert.

As an introvert, my battery has to be charged, just like the battery of a laptop. When the battery is fully charged, a laptop runs great and is quite valuable. No one would say a laptop is weird or bad because it has to be recharged. We simply learn that that is how laptops are designed so we make sure we charge them before we need them. Extroverts are more like basketballs. As long as someone is there doing something with them, basketballs have plenty of energy, which they get by being bounced by a person. When they are left alone, they aren’t bouncing anymore. No one would say that a basketball is useless just because it doesn’t jump off the shelf and bounce by itself. We understand that basketballs need people to give them the energy to go.

If you love to run errands alone or love to eat lunch at your desk at work or anything else like that, don’t let anyone make you feel as if you are “odd” or “aloof” or worse still, “antisocial.” If you recharge your batteries best when you get some time alone, you are most likely an introvert, and just knowing that is so awesome and explains so much. Now you know why you start feeling anxious in a long meeting or when house guests won’t leave. That feeling is totally expected for introverts, and now you’ll know that you need to break away – alone – in order to feel and function at your best. Likewise now you can understand why you may feel lonely today, when it was just yesterday you were craving some time alone. Introverts are normal human beings (despite what you may have heard) :) and of course we need others. In fact we form very strong and deep connections, when we find people we really like and like to be with. Once we understand our needs for companionship vs. solitude, we can come closer to the right balance where we get plenty of blissful and refreshing alone time, yet we never get all the way to lonely.

credit : http://introvertzone.com/introverts-need-time-alone-but-can-get-lonely