tepuk dada...

and become king kong...








ok im joking... today i wanna talk about the statement, tepuk dada tanya selera.

i recently heard someone saying this... it's an age-old statement for us the malay community... and some of you will shout, but you are NOT malay what! badigol, i am not malay but i know my malay customs, thank you. ok back to that statement, tepuk dada tanya selera.

lemme try and translate that to english. tap your chest and ask what you desire, is that it? the word desire, lemme look up the meaning of it... ok FOUND! Desire is a sense of longing for a person or object or hoping for an outcome. In Malay, the word - selera - i can safely put it as a synonym for nafsu. wrong? er, well when the word selera comes out i can only think of eating. when we are hungry, and we see A LOT of food, we tend to take all of it and hoping (*keyword*) that it will satisfy our hunger to the max. isn't thatnafsu? so i can say selera=nafsu.

so when you tap your chest and ask what you desire, im sure in the end, we will want things that we want, not things that we need. for an example, we see a very beautiful dress and our desire is to buy it and make it ours.. but then do we need it? and flip the price tag, it's mindbogglingly expensive, but still the heart desires it... but then do we need it? dont we have enough dresses in our wardrobe? think again, do we need it?

then let's try this... let's change that statement to a better one. try tap your chest and ask what your iman desire..." in malay, tepuk dada tanya IMAN. we see that dress and yes we desire to buy it and make it ours, but then tap your chest and ask your iman, do we think it's worth the money buying that dress? won't it be wastage (pembaziran) when we have a lot more dresses in our wardrobe? that money, it can be used for so many other beneficial ways. will Allah approve of what we are spending our money for?

i personally believe that we should change that statement from tepuk dada tanya selerato tepuk dada tanya iman. tepuk dada tanya selera, will lead us to do things that ournafsu desire, which is not always a good thing. tepuk dada tanya iman, will lead us to stop doing things that our nafsu desire, which is a good thing, Alhamdulillah.

when we ask our iman, we tend to stop and ponder and think about the pros and cons of doing something. it makes us act wisely. it makes us remember that what we do today, we have to answer to Allah tomorrow.

please note that this is a reminder to myself. i heard the statement a thousand times over and i still feel it's not right. im not trying to teach anyone here. im not a teacher. i dont enjoy teaching. but i love learning and finding out new things. and then i love sharing. what's the use of learning and not sharing, right?

so, friends! chuck away that tepuk dada tanya selera mentality and let's embrace thetepuk dada tanya IMAN mentality. aite? May Allah bless us all and keep us away from the whispers of syaitan. InsyaAllah...

the good things are from Allah, the bad things are from my weakness as a human.