'What could have been..'

Once, when i was still in my schooling years, a teacher told us a story, a real story he said. We listened quietly to the plot, but soon, we forgot.

It was only after a few years later that the story struck my memory, after I experienced exactly the same situation like what he told us. At that time, I was still doing my bachelors' degree course at UBD.

The story began as I was sitting at a car wash, waiting for my car. I realised that the worker kept on looking at me, so I smiled.

'You know, my classroom was next to yours,' he said.

Then we chatted for a while, and later I learnt that he was kicked from school back then because his friends hid their cigars inside his bag several times. Or so he said. With expression full of regret he wished that he chose the right friends, within the good circle of friends, not the oppossite, and how envious he was to me and many other friends who managed get good jobs and future. Then he ended his words with the tittle my teacher gave to his story, 'What could have been...?' And I remained silent.

***

Now towards my 23th years of living, the story struck me again. Alhamdulillah, He made us take the right decissions. We did took some wrong steps, and we suffered for that. But then again, everything was already written.

“Behind every trial and sorrow that He makes us shoulder, [Allah] has a reason.” ~ Khaled Hosseini

Should I am asked to write all the blessings in disguise that He gave me, I'll just write two words: TOO MANY. Now I realised that all my pain, sorrow, loneliness and failures in the past led me here, to this path. And I can't help but being grateful to all those pains and say, 'Alhamdulillah' and ask myself, what if those things never happened? What could have been if my leg never broke, perhaps I can't enter UBD because I left my documents during the interview. Someting like that.

'When we see a tiger, we can be a person who blames Allah because he created the tiger, or a person who is grateful because He did not give it wings.' And alhamdulillah, he made me the latter =)