Today is a historical day for Malaysians. For the first time, in full scale, we are experiencing a moment where our movements are restricted, during a period people usually travel and spend time outside – the school holidays.
Narrated Anas: The Prophet (PBUH) said, “The real patience is at the first stroke of a calamity.”
Bukhari
While some of us are at work due to the nature of our jobs, most of us are assigned to work from home to minimize the number of people in the office (and on the street).
Despite being an essential service provider (a takaful operator), approximately 50% of our workforce are working from home – me included. Hopefully we will be able to reduce it further in the days to come. Trying our best to play our part as a responsible corporate entity to help curb the spread of COVID-19 throughout the country.
It’s certainly difficult times, with those who are directly impacted financially, to individual daily routines, especially for families and people with special needs.
Personally I’m still figuring out how to manage my situation effectively – juggling work from home and my special son’s daily activities.
As a child on the autism spectrum, he is known for his rigidness and routines, which is suddenly disrupted within a short period of time. This is coupled with his hyper-activeness and entry into adolescence stage that comes with a unique set of challenges I’ve never experienced before. His unpredictable mood swings and spontaneous burst of tantrums can be mentally and physically draining to deal with.
Hopefully I can come out with enough activities to keep him occupied for the next 2 weeks, while attending to work emails, whatsapp messages and document reviews. Praying I have enough patience and strength to go through this new daily routine.
But praying harder that everyone who doesn’t need to go out for any reason, for whatever that can wait be delayed, for people to remain calm, be patient and stay put.
Basically praying hard for people to please stay at home.
It’s hard I know. It’s been a hard day one for me too.
Coming back to corporate responsibilities, against the background of people’s financial worries, burdens and circumstances, glad to see banks providing leeways to its customers on repayment of debts.
It is definitely difficult times for the people especially those with variable income streams (even some fixed salary staff are not spared from pay-cuts, unpaid leaves etc – who knows what will happen in the near future), this simple kind act would certainly help lessen the burden.
It was narrated that Abu Hurairah said:”The Messenger of Allah said: ‘Whoever relieves a Muslim of some worldly distress, Allah will relieve him of some of the distress of the Day of Resurrection, and whoever conceals (the faults of) a Muslim, Allah will conceal him (his faults) in this world and the Day of Resurrection. And whoever relives the burden from a destitute person, Allah will relieve him in this world and the next. Allah will help His slave so long as His slave helps his brother. Whoever follows a path in pursuit of knowledge, Allah will make easy fro him a path to paradise. No people gather in one of the houses of Allah, reciting the Book of Allah and teaching it to one another, but the angels will surround them, tranquility will descend upon them, mercy will envelop them and Allah will mention them to those who are with Him. And whoever is hindered because of his bad deeds, his lineage will be of no avail to him.'”
Ibn Majah
For those who are able to service their debts, I personally encourage to continue doing so, so that the impact on these responsible financial institutions are also lessen enabling them to continue providing financial assistance to those in need (also lessen the impact of the people working there).
While takaful is unable to provide the same flexibility, do hope you continue to keep your certificates in force as we don’t know what can happen in the days to come.
Just Stay Home
Earlier of the day, the Director General of Health, Datuk Dr. Noor Hisham Abdullah went public begging everyone to stay at home. You can see from his body language that he is exhausted, but you can hear from his voice and see it in his eyes – he truly cares for all Malaysians and wants this period to be over as soon as possible.
Then at 8pm, the Prime Minister went on public television, begging everyone in Malaysia no matter who you are – stay at home and protect yourself and your family, stay put where you are, we want to break the chain of infection.
It can’t be clearer than that. And no one is talking about what has happened, you can’t undo it. It’s about creating a safer future, our days of tomorrow.
The counter went up again, now at a total of 790 confirmed cases.
Like a broken record, reminding myself and everyone that each of us has their role to pay – for the ones giving, and the ones receiving, more importantly for everyone who needs to stay at home.
Only together, we can safely come out of this calamity, for today, tomorrow and the future.