growing old and dying

Since my late 30s, I have the tendency to think I'm a little bit older than I am. Example, when I had just passed my 37th year, and people ask me how old I am, I tend to say I'm 38 or even coming 40.

Now that I've passed 40, everytime I look at old ladies in their 60s-70s I think about how I'll be - cause it won't be too long when I'm going to be like that - that is, if my decreed time on earth is till then.

I have a vision of how I'd like to be when I'm that old. I hope to be still actively writing, be a thinker, an intellectual person.

An intellectual person, as Syed Hussein Alatas described in his essay in 1959 'The Intellectuals', "is a person who engages himself in thinking about ideas and non-material problems using his faculty of reason." This person may or may not have academic qualifications - and is well versed in the capacity of his intellectual interest.

I guess there is hope for me to be one.

I hope, in my old days, I'm still actively learning new beneficial things, doing dakwah in my own attainable capacity. I hope to write beneficial writings.

I hope I will be around, as long as my children need me, and will go before I become a burden to them. I hope I will go when my iman is at it's peak, I hope I will go easily, I hope I will attain goodness in this world and the Hereafter.

I hope and pray the same for everyone.

Afterall, what is life - if not a preparation for death.

.