After about one year and a half, my class on Introductory Islam at a local mosque was completed today. After spending every Saturday morning for that period, a bond has surely developed between my students and myself.Despite having taught for years, there will be some classes which you feel for and despite the years of experience, you still feel melancholic at the conclusion of any class. I go through this all the time. I am sure every teacher does too.
But, we rest easy at night because we as teachers always pray that those lessons imparted will be beneficial to our students. And we hope that after us, they will move on to higher things in life and will fly higher than before. At the end of the day, their success in life is the intangible reward to us that made us smile, and convince us to pursue moulding yet another group of students again, despite the challenges that we face along the way. Seeing one student succeed is our validation to our commitment - not that we need one, but being human, it motivates us to strive harder. For students and teachers with a long-term perspective on education, such relationship is like a parent and a child. They go on, and on for some ...
As such, in this entry, I wish to dedicate my most favourite part of The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran to my students, whose lessons with me may have just ended, or to those students whose lessons with me have ended long ago. Thank you for the journey together.
The journey with me may have ended, but your journey with others is just beginning still.
Yet, my prayers for you have never stopped despite...
"Fare you well, people of Orphalese.
This day has ended.
It is closing upon us even as the water-lily upon its own tomorrow.
What was given us here we shall keep,
And if it suffices not, then again must we come together and together stretch our hands unto the Giver.
Forget not that I shall come back to you.
A little while, and my longing shall gather dust and foam for another body.
A little while, a moment of rest upon the wind, and another woman shall bear me.
Farewell to you and the youth I have spent with you.
It was but yesterday we met in a dream.
You have sung to me in my aloneness, and I of your longings have built a tower in the sky.
But now our sleep has fled and our dream is over, and it is no longer dawn.
The noontide is upon us and our half-waking has turned to a fuller day, and we must part.
If in the twilight of memory we should meet once more, we shall speak again together and you shall sing to me a deeper song.
And if our hands should meet in another dream, we shall build another tower in the sky."
2 comments:
I got a used Khalil Gibran, The Prophet, from a shop on one of the himalayas peaks... fell in love with him instantly but was left heartbroken much later when I discovered that many muslims actually denounced him.
No matter what, his poetry are undeniably powerful and beautiful....
Saedah,
Don't loose heart. We shall not be like the herd of sheeps that does so. We do not reject the whole tree for a small broken branch within.
As Muslims, we do not judge the person, but we take the beautiful lessons rendered. What many failed to see is that: if they take the person and as humans are imperfect, everyone will definitely fail someone. We even failed ourselves sometimes.
Then, what do we do?
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