Gatherings and Gratefulness

It’s almost the end of Syawal, but for Malaysian, this doesn’t stop us from celebrating Eid, or Hari Raya, through having ‘open house’. I had a problem to describe this to a Chinese neighbour, I simply said it’s a Malaysian party.

What I find best about these gatherings is they make me feel grateful of my situation. Meeting fellow Malaysian who migrated to the UK, sharing our life experiences and struggles, made me feel that I had it relatively easy. Alhamdulillah. There’s also the sense that everyone is in this together, trying to make sense of the sacrifices made to be far away from our homeland. We’ll reminisce about small things that we ourselves would take for granted when we’re in Malaysia, triggering another round of gratefulness.

Of course there’s a tinge of sadness but we all made our choices and this is where we are. Where we’ll be next year, nobody knows.

Thank you for reading.