On why The Joker will never stop and the Batman should think of alternatives

And they say that a hero can save us,

I'm not gonna stand here and wait,

I'll hold on to the wings of the eagles,

Watch as we all fly away
(Hero, Chad Kroeger)

In the many years that I've lived, I've been blessed enough to meet many people who thought me, directly through their opinions and indirectly through their actions and experiences, things I have had problems with comprehending. 

I remember one day at school when a dear friend decided to ask a question to our teacher. It was a rather naughty question, which he decided to ask after some friction between the guys and the girls at school about a topic my brain couldn’t retrieve anymore. Obviously it was a rather trivial issue, if not, I think even my humble brain would be able to remember it better.  The question was "do we need to change ourselves in order to join a group?"

The answer to the question, given by Ustaz Azam after the dusk namaz was quite a good one. We were in the Al- Qadisiyah mosque, all a hundred plus of us from the 2005 class, staying at school for the big exam, SPM (Sijil Penentu Masa Depan, as a teacher of ours had once printed on the last page of a trial paper). 

He said change is like driving on the highway. You face only one direction, forwards, and you have 3 lanes. A slow lane for the more relaxed, the right lane for the fast ones who want to get to their destination with only their destination in mind, and the middle lane for the ones in between. It’s ok to choose whichever lane you would like to drive on, but you shouldn’t drive on the opposite direction, because that spells danger and death. Good...isn’t it?

Many people though find it awfully hard to change. Certainly is the case for yours truly. Because it feels better if someone could come and carry us to our destination. Like Batman who catches all the crooks and stuffs them into jail and Oprah who would have her crew clean and makeover a messed up house. But I think even Batman and Oprah would get sick of doing things for people, because they would know that these instant magical remedies are not addressing the root of the problem. So even if Batman could stuff The Joker again and again into Arkham Asylum, The Joker once out will continue to bring trouble, because he doesn’t want to change. 

Which brings me to a point. An uncle of mine once answered my cousin's honest question of "how did you stop smoking?" with a simple "I wanted to stop, and so I stopped". That quick answer probably summarized a longer one in the best of ways.  The thing you probably need most for change to happen is a clear goal. What is it that you truly want? Do you sincerely want the change that you verbalize to others or to yourself? Because if you really want it, you will get it. So when my school counselor asked me about the secret to my SPM result, I didn’t know what to answer him. Because there wasn’t a secret, there was just a goal, the will to achieve it, the effort and the faith that if you believe in God and try as hard as you can, God will not forsake you. But I guess I'll bite my tongue and say that the above was probably an oversimplification.  Because obviously we have variables in our lives, and forces outside of our control that interplay into the whole complex affecting us. As much as we would like to have complete power over our lives, we should understand that in reality, for us humans, there isn't such a thing as complete power. But we can certainly try to woo these factors into helping us to change. But that is a different story altogether, probably someone's social science thesis paper for all I know. So I shall not indulge myself in a typing frenzy for that. 

Believe me dear reader when I say that change is a cyclic process. That is what we learn from psychiatric lectures. That people are bound to relapse in the process of changing. The thing that makes a person finally change is their will and persistence, and a faith that their hard work will not go to waste. So it’s ok if you relapse and fall. You just need to know that you can rise again. If it’s too hard to rise again in that very moment, take a break, reflect and then try again. If it’s too hard to stand up by yourself, hold out your hand and ask for help. Because someone will eventually grasp your hand and help you up. Believe me.  You are worth the efforts of another.

Which brings me to another point. That is about helping people to change. I've heard again and again in dramas, both on TV and in real life, how in arguments, a person would say "you need to change. Unless you change, this is not going anywhere". Look, it’s easy to tell someone to change, and wait for them to reach their destinations by themselves.  But I think it’s more enriching and rewarding if we could hold their hands and walk with them along the way. It will tell the person that "hey! I'm here for you. I'll help you through because I care about you and I want to see you become a better person" and I believe, through personal experience that it means the whole world to them. And who knows, we probably could learn a thing or two from the journey together. So don’t be greedy people! Help each other change! Share and learn from each other! Remind in the spirit of love and brotherhood!  

Which brings me to the final point of this entry. About the power of the individual. We’ve heard again and again that change starts with you. That one person can affect the whole world. One person can send off a tsunami that can shake the whole ocean of people around them. It is possible. At least I believe so. And so if you see something that needs changing, whatever it is, you should take action to change it. And it’s ok to be the one who starts the changing. You will be amazed at how your actions will affect another person and how it can cascade and become larger until finally the change you brought will be practiced by all.  Don’t underestimate the influence you have on others, you have more power than you might think.

Easier said than done. But you'd never know until you try. So give it a try people! Set your end point, look up the road map, get into a car, drive in the lane of your choice, and get to your destination! You don’t have to wait for a hero to get you there.

Because the hero of the story is you.

Always wanted to be an X-Man

Azfar 

p.s.: Reading this before closing it just made me think about how disorganized and messed up this entry is.  Nevertheless I hope that all of us got something from reading this.  As I've constantly said, in hopes of defending my mediocrity in thinking, you've probably read this from a lot of other places with better articles but I'd like to remind myself of this anyways. As a friend of mind kindly told me when I asked them if my blog was boring "it's your blog, who gives a damn anyway?”  Anyhow I'd appreciate comments from whoever it is. As it is written up there, sharing (is supposed to) makes everything better.