Semuanya ada...

Dalam hidup ini, segala-galanya ada batasan. Semuanya ada had dan kewajaran yang perlu dipertimbang dan dipatuhi. Umpama seorang ayah yang menyayangi anaknya juga perlu ada had agar tidak keterlaluan. Kemanjaan yang keterlaluan menjadikan sianak memijak kepala siayah. Ini mungkin ada kekecualiannya jika anak itu tahu menghargai kasih sayang yang diberi oleh ayah. Seorang suami yang menyayangi isteri juga perlu mengawal dan menghadkannya agar isterinya tidak lupa diri. Seorang guru perlu mendidik anak didiknya dengan baik. Namun begitu kebaikan itu perlu ada batasannya agar anak murid tahu nilai hubungan antara guru dan murid.

Ada masanya kita beralah. Ada ketikanya kita memberi dan membantu. Pada saat tertentu kita bertoleransi. dalam banyak keadaan kita perlu berkongsi. Namun begitu semua ini ada batasan dan hadnya. Jika tiada batasannya, orang yang kita beralah, orang yang kita bantu, orang yang kita berkongsi serta orang yang kita sering bertoleransi akan lupa diri. Orang ini mungkin akan terus meminta dan meminta. Orang ini mungkin akan lupa untuk berterima kasih, apatah lagi bersyukur dan mengenang budi. Orang ini pada banyak masa dan keadaan akan terus meminta dan menagih walau pun yang ditagih itu tiada kewajarannya. Mereka ini 'menuntut peha setelah mendapat betis'.

Orang ini akan menggunakan kesempatan dan peluang yang ada untuk memenuhi kepentingan mereka termasuklah ketika orang lain dalam kesempitan. Mereka mengambil kesempatan atas kesusahan orang lain termasuklah orang yang selama ini membantunya. Tidak hairan jika orang seperti ini sanggup menekan kita yang selama ini beralah, bertoleransi, berkongsi dan membantunya. Malah ada ketikanya mereka ini akan bersekongkol dengan pihak lain termasuk seteru mereka sehingga tergamak menekan kita untuk mencapai impian. Mereka ini adalah gerombolan hipokrasi dan 'opportunist'.

Mereka ini tidak tahu silu, sedia menggadaikan setiakawan untuk ketamakan dan hajat. Kemahiran hipokrasi mereka membolehkan ada masanya berwatak seperti kawan dan ada ketika yang lain bertingkah laku seperti lawan. Mereka ini api dalam sekam, gunting dalam lipatan, musuh dalam selimut dan telunjuk lurus kelingking berkait.

Amat malang bagi kita yang secara berterusan jujur terhadap mereka, menganggap mereka sebagai teman atas nama perpaduan, sentiasa memenuhi tuntutan dan tagihan mereka. Mungkin kita banyak berasa bimbang sehinggakan apabila diminta kita memberi, apatah lagi jika diugut. Pelbagai perubahan kita buat untuk memenuhi tuntutan mereka. Akta demi akta kita pinda, undang-undang demi undang-undang kita gubal untuk memenuhi permintaan mereka. Lebih malang lagi belum diminta kita telah menawarkan sesuatu keistimewaan kepada mereka. Malangnya mereka terus tidak mencapai kepuasan. Kita bimbang hak kita akan terlepas dan tergadai.

Mengubah suai pesanan Sasterawan Negara Usman Awang yang antaranya berbunyi:

Baiknya hati orang ...... itu tidak terbandingkan
Selagi yang ada sanggup diberikan

Sehingga tercipta sebuah kiasan:

“Dagang lalu nasi ditanakkan

Suami pulang lapar tak makan

Kera di hutan disusu-susukan

Anak dipangkuan mati kebuluran"

"He Wanted You to Know"

On the day of Bryan's death, June 3, wife Bobbie and son Bryan keep a bedside vigil.The recent photo of father and son is on the bed. [Times photo: V. Jane Windsor]

by Sue Landry

Bryan Curtis started smoking at 13, never thinking that 20 years later it would kill him and leave a wife and children alone. In his last weeks, he set out with a message for young people.

Bryan Lee Curtis, then 33, holds son Bryan Jr., 2, in this March 29 photo. Curtis would die about two months later. [Photo: Curtis Family]

ST. PETERSBURG -- Cigarette smoke hangs in the air in the room where Bryan Lee Curtis lies dying of lung cancer.

His head, bald from chemotherapy, lolls on a pillow. The bones of his cheeks and shoulders protrude under taut skin. His eyes are open, but he can no longer respond to his mother or his wife, Bobbie, who married him in a makeshift ceremony in this room three weeks ago after doctors said there was no hope.

In Bryan's emaciated hands, Bobbie has propped a photograph taken just two months ago. It shows a muscular and seemingly healthy Bryan holding his 2-year-old son, Bryan Jr. In the picture, he is 33. He turned 34 on May 10.

A pack of cigarettes and a lighter sit on a table near Bryan's bed in his mother's living room. Even though tobacco caused the cancer now eating through his lungs and liver, Bryan smoked until a week ago, when it became impossible.

Across the room, a 20-year-old nephew crushes out a cigarette in a large glass ashtray where the butt joins a dozen others. Bobbie Curtis says she'll try to stop after the funeral, but right now, it's just too difficult. Same for Bryan's mother, Louise Curtis.

"I just can't do it now," she says, although she hopes maybe she can after the funeral.

Bryan knew how hard it is to quit. But when he learned he would die because of his habit, he thought maybe he could persuade at least a few kids not to pick up that first cigarette. Maybe if they could see his sunken cheeks, how hard it was becoming to breathe, his shriveled body, it might scare them enough.

So a man whose life was otherwise unremarkable set out in the last few weeks of his life with a mission.

* * *

Bryan started when he was just 13, building up to more than two packs a day. He talked about quitting from time to time, but never seriously tried.

Plenty of time for that, he figured. Older people got cancer. Not people in their 30s, not people who worked in construction, as a roofer, as a mechanic.

He had no health insurance. But he was more worried about his mother, 57, who had smoked since she was 25.

Louise Curtis grieves for a son who told her, a smoker for 32 years, to worry about herself, not him.[Times photo: V. Jane Windsor]

"He would say, "Mom, don't worry about me. Worry about yourself. I'm healthy,' " Louise Curtis remembers. "You think this would happen later, when you're 60 or 70 years old, not when you're his age."

He knew, only a few days after he went to the hospital on April 2 with severe abdominal pain, how wrong he had been. He had oat cell lung cancer that had spread to his liver. He probably had not had it long. Also called small cell lung cancer, it's an aggressive killer that usually claims the lives of its victims within a few months.

While it seems unusual to the Curtis family, Dr. Jeffrey Paonessa, Bryan's oncologist, said he is seeing more lung cancer in young adults.

"We've seen lung cancer earlier and earlier because people are starting to smoke earlier and earlier," Paonessa said. Chemotherapy sometimes slows the process, but had little effect in Bryan's case, he said.

Bryan also knew, a few days after the diagnosis, that he wanted somehow to try to save at least one kid from the same fate. He sat down and talked with Bryan Jr. and his 9-year-old daughter, Amber, who already had been caught once with a cigarette. But he wanted to do more. Somehow, he had to get his story out.

When he still had some strength to leave the house, kids would stare.

"They'd come up and look at him because he looked so strange," Louise Curtis said. "He'd look at them and say, "This is what happens to you when you smoke.'

"The kids would say, "Oh, man. I can't believe it,' " Louise Curtis said.

After the graveside service June 8, this friend and a handful of relatives light up.[Times photo: V. Jane Windsor]

In the last few weeks, Bryan's mother has been the agent for his mission to accomplish some good with the tragedy. She has called newspapers and radio and television stations, seeking someone willing to tell her son's story, willing to help give him the one thing he wanted before he died. Bryan never got to tell his story to the public. He spoke for the last time an hour before a visit from a Times reporter and photographer.

"I'm too skinny. I can't fight anymore," he whispered to his mother at 9 a.m. June 3. He died that day at 11:56 a.m., just nine weeks after the diagnosis.

Bryan Lee Curtis Sr. was buried at Memorial Park Cemetery in St. Petersburg on June 8, a rare cloudy day that threatened rain.

At the funeral service at nearby Blount, Curry and Roel Funeral Home, Bryan's casket was open and 50 friends and relatives could see the devastating effects of the cancer.

Addiction is more powerful.

As the graveside ritual ended, a handful of relatives backed away from the gathering, pulled out packs of cigarettes and lit up.

Originally Published on June 15, 1999 in the St. Petersburg TimesPosted at www.WhyQuit.com on July 15, 1999

Konflik, peperangan, kekejaman dan kezaliman

Konflik dan peperangan seiring dengan kewujudan manusia. Ia menjadi semakin hebat dan dasyat selari dengan kemajuan hidup manusia. Konflik dan peperangan berlaku dalam banyak bentuk seperti konflik etnik, konflik agama, konflik dalaman negara, konflik antara negara yang berjiran, konflik antara negara yang letaknya berjauhan atau konflik antara pakatan negara.

Pada abad ke-20 umpamanya, banyak konflik dunia berlaku. Konflik dalaman sebagai contoh tercetus di Acheh, Ambon, Selatan Filipina, Selatan Thailand, konflik etnik Bosnia Herzegovina, Rohinya, konflik Semenanjung Balkan dan konflik di Kashmir. Konflik dan peperangan dalam skala yang lebih besar pula seperti Perang Dunia Pertama ( 1914-1918 ), Perang Dunia Kedua ( 1939-1945 ), Perang Vietnam, Perang Korea , perang Iran -Iraq, konflik Israel Palestine, gerakan ketenteraan Amerika menyerang Iraq dan gerakan menentang keganasan.

Konflik dan peperangan tidak dapat dielakkan. Apa yang malang dan menyedihkan, konflik dan peperangan telah melampaui batasan yang digariskan oleh Pertubuhan bangsa-Bangsa Bersatu dan melanggar hak asasi manusia. Tanpa rasa malu dan belas kasihan pemimpin-pemimpin yang terlibat telah membenamkan nilai kemanusiaan demi mencapai matlamat peperangan mereka. Pemimpin-pemimpin perang telah melakukan kezaliman dan kekejaman terhadap lawan masing-masing terutama jika lawan itu lemah dan telah tewas.

Justeru itu berlaku tragedi pembunuhan atau penyeksaan kaum wanita, kanak-kanak, orang tua dan pencabulan kehormatan wanita. Untuk melepaskan geram, ramai tawanan diseksa dengan kejam, dicabul dan diaibkan maruah mereka sebagai manusia. Sesungguhnya kekejaman dan kezaliman dilakukan dengan sewenang-wenangnya atas nama peperangan. Ini seolah-olah, dalam peperangan tidak ada peraturan, etika atau batasannya. Pihak yang dominan, kuat dan memenangi peperangan halal menzalimi lawannya tanpa halangan termasuk batasan nilai kemanusiaan.

Islam, telah menggariskan etika peperangan yang mengutamakan nilai kemanusiaan dan persekitaran. Walau pun namanya peperangan, Islam terus menekankan keamanan dan kesejahteraan umat manusia dan alam sekitar. Nabi Muhammad saw sering mengingatkan pemimpin perang dan tentera Islam tentang etika peperangan. Antaranya:

1. berperang hanya setelah diperangi.
2. tidak memerangi orang kafir yang tiada kekuatan dan keupayaan seperti kanak-kanak, wanita, orang cacat dan lumpuh serta ahli kitab atau paderi.

3. dilarang merosakkan harta benda, memotong pokok, membakar rumah dan membunuh binatang kecuali darurat.

4. jangan berlebih-lebihan dan melakukan pengkhianatan,

5. jangan menyiksa tawanan perang.

6. jangan menyiksa mayat.

7. jangan mengingkari janji.

Peperangan penuh kekejaman dan kezaliman. Tawanan perang diseksa dan diaibkan tanpa nilai kemanusiaan. Kekejaman dan kezaliman dalam peperangan sememangnya mewajarkan kita menjenayahkan peperangan.

Seloka Untuk Cikgu

Seloka buat cikgu-cikgu...

Buat nyiru berselang-selang
Sudah siap diisi pala
Jasa guru sungguh terbilang
Mengajar mendidik tanpa berkira

Mengajar mendidik tanpa berkira
Jasa baktimu tidak diragu
Doktor, hakim, peguam cara
Bermula dari gerakmu cikgu

Cerita buruk jangan disebar
Tinggal-tinggalkan jadi kenangan
Cikgu Munshi banyak bersabar
Berjuang di sini bukannya ringan

Munshi Sulaiman medan kita
Menjadi igauan cikgu luar
Tak kenal maka tak cinta
Sudah masuk tak mahu keluar

Sudah masuk tak mahu keluar
Itulah nikmat berbakti di sini
Tuan-puan mursyid yang sabar
Segala cabaran terus didepani

Segala cabaran terus dihadapi
3G, 4A3, 5A2 menjadi igauan
Masuk kelas semangat berapi
Bila keluar penuh kelesuan

Selamat 'Bercuti' Cikgu ( Andainya kalian benar-benar bercuti )