Sunday, October 12, 2008

I Love Quotes and Don't Mess With My Mother

I love quotes. Don’t you? It doesn’t really matter where they come from. They could come from the speeches of famous influential people, movies, or even Homer Simpson. More often than not, they all make sense. There are a few that have stuck in my head and time to time I would revise the application and how much they make sense.

I once had a rather uncomfortable conversation with a friend’s father. He said, “Taufiq, when there are problems, issues, and conflicts, arise in a family or any intimate relationships, the man is always to blame. Never put the blame on the women, and never put it on the kids”. How we ended up talking about it, only god knows. However I cannot agree more with that old man. He had the hands on experience. In the beginning he did not anticipate the degree of destruction his misdemeanor would cause and eventually things blew out of proportion as it should. It has gotten better for him since but left an ugly in his marriage. While he was lost in the world of infidelity he always had in mind, ways to justify his deceitful behavior. There was always someone to blame and point fingers at. However once the gravity of the situation was unearthed, it was all pointing back at him. It was he who distanced himself, and it was he who brought himself to believe that what he was doing wasn’t wrong. Perhaps it wasn’t. But deception makes facts irrelevant. In the end, family was severely affected. Fortunately he repented, and saved his family and more importantly, marriage. It was however like driving a car that’s been fixed from a nasty crash. Not as good and far from being better. Never the same.

Alfred Lord Tennyson once said, “It’s better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all”. I must say, I couldn’t disagree more. You don’t want to be driving your ultimate dream car knowing it will be taken away from you. Don’t believe me? Ask Jeremy Clarkson how hard it was returning the Bugatti Veyron after having driven it across Europe. Your also wouldn’t want to go back to drinking wine from the box once you can afford those properly bottled ones (with real cork, not those fancy modern ‘neo corks’). And you definitely would not want to go back to cheap escort service once you are welcomed into that executive sex group you had been longing to enroll into. What I’m trying to say is that if you knew something good just couldn’t and wouldn’t last there’s no point having it at all. Having things you like, enjoy, and love, taken away from you really sucks. You’ll end up dreaming of cruising in a Veyron at record breaking speed while really you were struggling to engage second gear in your 1992 Vauxhall. Or sipping wine that has come out of a tap attached to a carton box, from a crystal glass. Instead of getting that subtle scent of oakwood, all you get is the smell of a paper factory. Worst, is having sex with a teethless 50 year-old hooker, while trying so hard to picture her as a tight 30 year-old workoholic executive, breaking away from work to fulfill her natural desire, screaming your name out loud, but the truth, you know for a fact, in a weeks time itchy spots will appear on your shaft, you’d rather die than face the embarrassment of telling you physician’s reception what your visit was regarding. So, no, having love and lost is far from better, instead it’s the opposite of better, than never have loved at all. Sorry Alfred, you should’ve gone out more.

One fine summer evening during the last days of my student life I was hanging out with my two best friends, in the back yard of our rented home in Filton - effortlessly chugging a crate of Stella Artois (each) - one of them said something quite wise. It was more of an open ended question. He said, “If there was someone who has all these while, provided you with everything you’d ever need that you feel forever indebted, and one day that very same person kills your mother, would you still respect that person?” I sat there and thought, ‘wow, I’ve never actually thought of that’. I meant I’ve never really put it that way and I realized there’s no better way to put it. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out the logic of course. Naturally the answer would definitely be a big ‘NO’. That is one line that nobody, under any circumstances, should ever cross. No external factor, apart from divine intervention, can ever disrupt that sacred bond between a son and his mother. God made it that way and that’s just the way it is. And when I said nobody, I literally meant nobody without exceptions. Those who hurt my mother, in any possible way for any possible reason, deliberate or not, do not and will not ever deserve my respect even if it worth nothing regardless all the good things they have provided me with. Give me all the money in the world and beg for forgiveness, a piece of shit will always be a piece of shit.

-Tau

p/s: don't mess with my mother